


The Rung Sessions

by choomchoom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mind Control, Panic Attacks, Superpowers, Torture, lots of discussions of past trauma; content warnings in the relevant chapters, teetering on the edge of malpractice, therapy for the strange and unusual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-05-13 00:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19240246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Rung is a therapist who specializes in treating Outliers - people who have an ability that science can't quite yet explain. Rodimus starts fires. Drift sees the future. Prowl notices details about his surroundings so intricate that no one else can perceive them. Chromedome reads minds. All of them have Rung's help in dealing with their powers, relationships, adulting, and everything else. But as time goes on, it becomes clear that Rung's ties with a certain shadowy organization aren't all in the past.Human AU based on the podcast The Bright Sessions. Familiarity with the podcast not required.





	1. Rodimus, Session 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic focuses largely on therapy and mental health. I am not a mental health professional, and this fic is not written with the intention of providing mental health-related advice. Additionally, this fic does not necessarily portray healthy or appropriate practitioner-patient relationships. My intention is not to excuse anything as appropriate when it isn't, but I want to say up front that this fic does not provide a model for ideal therapist-patient interactions. All that said, I think this fic ended up with less unprofessional behavior than both Rung in MTMTE and Dr. Bright in The Bright Sessions, and I want to say explicitly that there's nothing even coming close to resembling therapist-patient romance. 
> 
> I'll do my best to warn for content that is likely to be triggering in the end notes of each chapter. Please let me know either in the comments or in a tumblr message if you need something tagged that I haven't been tagging.

_Session notes: Rodimus was referred to me by a contact at the TA. He completed a residential program there last week and was marked by the TA as needing ongoing support. He did not consent to his records from the TA being passed on to me, so all I know is that he is a 22-year-old elemental whose specific ability is to summon fire. I have no experience working with elementals in a therapeutic setting, but my human subjects research has shown elemental abilities tend to be one of the least inherently traumatizing of the known Outlier powers. Goal for this session is to establish trust and determine what Rodimus is looking to gain from therapy. That is, if he has an opinion, considering that these sessions are mandated by the TA indefinitely._

Rung looked around his office one last time as he rose from his seat. Everything, of course, was perfectly in order. His model ships were lined up on a freshly dusted shelf, office supplies were all in their designated corners, and the scant file he’d received for his new patient was safely tucked away.

Rung opened the door – the wooden door, he noticed for the first time. He hid his cringe. If this went well, it wouldn’t be an issue.

“Rodimus?” he called to the young man who was sitting in the waiting room, hands tucked in pockets, staring down a stack of magazines on a side table as his leg jiggled with nerves.

He turned towards Rung too fast, the movement too jerky for someone who hadn’t been well and truly disassociated from their surroundings. When he saw Rung, he climbed to his feet.

Rung took his usual seat at his desk, turning his chair towards the rest of the room. Rodimus perched himself on the couch, briefly clasping his hands in his lap and then tucking them under his thighs.

“How are you feeling today, Rodimus?”

“Fine. Y’know. Great, actually. You?”

“I am quite well, thank you for asking,” Rung said. “As you know, my name is Rung. You were referred to me by the TA.”

Rodimus nodded, shoulders taking on a defensive hunch. Rung internalized his frown.

“How did you find your stay there?”

“Informative,” Rodimus replied, still not looking at Rung.

Rung relaxed his own shoulders, taking as nonthreatening of a pose as possible. “Why do you think you’re here, Rodimus?”

“So they can keep an eye on me.”

“That’s not how I would characterize things,” Rung said. Rodimus looked up then to give Rung an openly disbelieving glance. “First of all, our sessions are completely confidential. Nothing that you discuss here will be accessible by anyone from the TA.”

“Don’t _you_ work for them?” Rodimus interjected, voice flat.

Rung tried to hide his concern at the indication of how thoroughly Rodimus distrusted him – that Rodimus thought he would lie about such an essential detail. “I used to,” Rung said. “But I found that our views and priorities diverged, and my current relationship with them is that of a community consultant. The only contact I have with the TA is when they refer patients to me.”

Rodimus’s nod still seemed skeptical. Rung guessed that only time and consistent sincerity would be enough to get Rodimus to believe him.

“The only exception to the confidentiality of our sessions is true of any therapeutic relationship: if what I hear in these sessions convinces me that you intend to harm yourself or others, I will have to notify the proper authorities,” Rung said. “Do you have any questions about that?”

Rodimus shook his head.

“The second aspect of what you said that I’d like to touch on is the actual purpose of these sessions. The TA wants you to be safe, but I’m not here to “keep an eye on you.” I’m here to work with you to integrate the things you learned at the TA into your everyday life and try to make it so that your ability doesn’t act to your detriment ever again.”

Rodimus looked up again. “How do you know about that?”

“I don’t know anything about you, Rodimus. I made the assumption that you entered the TA’s program because you’d struggled with your ability in the past. Forgive me if I was wrong, or if I overstepped.”

“No, you’re right,” Rodimus said. Rung gave him a moment to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Would you like to talk about that? We don’t have to.”

“I don’t know,” said Rodimus. “Honestly, I don’t know if I want to be here at all.”

“Okay,” said Rung. “In that case, how would you feel if we took the focus off of you and discussed some of the most successful proactive strategies my clients have used to control and live with their abilities? You can let me know if anything sounds promising.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Alright,” said Rung. He bent to get out a document he’d drawn up with the mental and physical strategies that he knew people used to cope with their outlier abilities. He snuck an appraising glance at Rodimus as he moved. Rodimus had taken his hands out of his pockets at some point and was wringing them together, squeezing one palm in a quick tempo. He looked like he might be a little more comfortable in the session if he had something to fidget with. The wall of model ships sat right behind Rung, always ready to be disassembled and reassembled. But the last person aside from Rung who had touched those ships was…

No, the model ships were off limits. Rung made a note to acquire some new fidget toys and then handed Rodimus a copy of the sheet.

_End of session notes: Patient is amenable to continuing sessions but appears reluctant to fully engage. His obvious distrust of the TA concerns me, and I can only hope that this distrust is unfounded._

 

* * *

 

 

The elevator doors are going to open. There will be a young man about Drift’s age on the elevator. For some reason he’ll stay on the elevator, even though Drift is going up from the bottom floor. The elevator is going to get stuck between floors two and three, and the other man is going to wind up in a panic attack that Drift won’t be able to talk him down from.

Drift has no idea what’s going to happen if he doesn’t get on the elevator.

Drift stepped onto the elevator.

The other occupant looked like he was around Drift’s age and just nodded when Drift pressed the button for the fifth floor. “Left my wallet up there,” he explained, even though Drift tried his best not to give him an enquiring look at his choice to stay on the elevator.

Drift didn’t know what to say. The visions never showed him anything _helpful_.

The doors closed and the car started to move. The level indicated on the screen began to rise – two, three – and then the floor dropped away.

The drop was just a few inches, but Drift stumbled as he hit the displaced ground and caught himself on a railing just as the lights went out.

The car was pitch dark even though it was the middle of the day. On instinct, Drift reached for his phone to use it as a flashlight. His companion was silent in the darkness.

He clicked the flashlight on and tried to push the doors open. They refused to budge, even when he dug his fingers as far as he could into the seam.

Next, he pointed the light at the door controls. Sure enough, one of the darkened buttons was labeled “Help”. There was a phone number underneath it.

The other passenger was seated, leaning against the wall. He’d probably fallen when the elevator dropped.

“Are you hurt?” Drift asked as he dials the Help number. The other passenger shook his head, the motion jerky around shallow breaths.

That’s all Drift could do before someone answered the phone. He still had the flashlight on, pointed awkwardly at the wall as he listened.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Drift said. He sat down cross-legged on the floor because it felt too awkward to stay standing. The other passenger had his head tucked between his knees, fingers threaded together behind his neck. Drift looked away as he spoke. “This number was listed under help in an elevator that, uh, that I’m stuck in.”

“This is building security at Mederi Commons,” said the person at the other end of the line.

“Yeah, that’s where I am. Building 2,” Drift said. “Between floors 2 and 3, I think. The power’s out in here, so I’m a little worried.”

“Someone’s on their way to check it out right now,” the person said. “Can I have your number to call you with updates?”

Drift gave it.

“Would you like to stay on the line while you wait?”

“No need for that, actually. Let me know if anything changes,” Drift said.

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks.”

Drift hung up and turned his attention to the other passenger in the corner. His breathing was hitching and he hadn’t moved from his tight curl against the wall. Drift put his phone on the floor between them so that it illuminated the center of the car like some kind of bizarre campfire.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked softly.

The other passenger took a few moments to compose himself to respond, battling hard for some semblance of control. “Keep talking?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Okay. That’s easy enough. My name is Drift, I’m here because my therapist’s office is in this building.”

The other passenger looked like he was gearing up to speak again, so Drift paused. “Rodimus,” he said. “Me too.”

“Good you meet you, Rodimus. I wish it were under better circumstances,” he said. “I’ll keep talking, and you let me know if you need anything, or if I should switch topics, okay?”

Rodimus nodded shakily, hands still clasped together at the back of his neck.

“I’ve been going to these yoga classes at the martial arts studio I just switched to,” he said. “They’re doing a series about chakras. Chakras are points on your body that are associated with certain feelings and types of perception. Stop me if you want to – I had a friend walk out of the room when I was trying to tell him about this, and even Rung – my therapist – doesn’t seem to like it much.” There was no way to know if Rodimus would find this as comforting as Drift did.

Rodimus didn’t tell him to stop. When Drift looked his way, he was still curled painfully tight around himself, but he was looking at Drift. His breathing was shaky, but a little better than it had started.

Drift found himself describing half-remembered details from yoga class, demonstrating the locations of the chakras by touching their locations on his own body, as he’d seen the instructor do. It calmed and centered him, tense as the situation was, and he hoped that some of the feeling was reaching Rodimus.

Both of them jumped when Drift’s phone vibrated on the floor. Drift picked it up, careful to keep the light from shining on Rodimus, and answered the call. “Hello?”

“Hi there, I just wanted to warn you that we’ll be turning the power back on now. The controls will have reset, so you’ll need to press the button for the floor you want.”

“Okay, thanks,” Drift said. To Rodimus, he said, “They’re going to turn the power back on.”

Seconds later, the lights turned back on. Drift reached up and pressed the number 5 and felt the elevator start to move. “It seems like it’s working now,” he said. He snuck a glance over at Rodimus, who had climbed to his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He was looking down at the elevator floor, shoulders still hunched.

The door slid open. “Aaaand we’re good,” Drift said into his phone, gesturing for Rodimus to step off before him. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Thanks for your patience,” the security person said, reminding Drift that he was _so late_ for his session. He hung up the phone and started down the hall toward Rung’s office.

Rodimus followed him. “Could you please…not tell Rung what happened?” he asked, the words quiet.

Drift stopped walking. “You know Rung?” Then the words clicked with what Rodimus had said in the elevator. “Wait, he’s your therapist too?”

Rodimus had been looking away, but he met Drift’s eyes at that. They both knew the same thing: Rung’s specialty was Outliers.

Drift had never met another outlier before. Was it rude to ask Rodimus what he could do? He realized then that asking that question would lead to him having to respond in kind, so he didn’t. Instead he said, “Of course I won’t tell him.”

“Thanks.” Rodimus’s gaze slid away again.

“Would you like a hug?” The question left Drift’s mouth before it had properly made its way through his brain. Who _said that_? Drift had never been big on hugs, especially when he was feeling vulnerable, but something about Rodimus’s demeanor demanded he ask.

“That would be awesome,” Rodimus said before Drift’s thoughts had a chance to truly spiral.

Well, that was that. Drift stepped forward and hugged Rodimus, who hugged him back. It was…nice? The hug didn’t feel like much in itself, but hearing Rodimus sigh next to his ear, feeling him relax minutely, the concept of being able to help someone instead of always just fucking things up… _that_ was nice.

Drift stepped back after a few seconds and summoned a smile for Rodimus. “Shall we?” he asked, casually raising an arm to point toward Rung’s office.

Rodimus just nodded. They made their way down the rest of the hallway in silence. Rodimus had his hands out of his pockets now, swinging them loosely at his sides as he walked. Drift opened the door to Rung’s office and Rodimus followed him inside.

Rung was right there, talking to Pipes at the desk. He looked up when the bell chimed to indicate their entrance. “Drift!” he said first. Then, “Rodimus?” The expression on his face flashed from confusion to concern to perfect neutrality in a blink.

“I left my wallet,” he said, walking over to one of the tables in the waiting room where there was indeed a wallet sitting out next to a stack of magazines. “See you next week, doc.”

“See you next week,” Rung said.

Rodimus met Drift’s eyes as he turned the door handle to leave. Instead of saying anything, he just smiled.

Drift turned back to Rung, who had definitely, definitely seen that. He looked thoughtful, but the expression smoothed over as he turned to Drift. “Shall we get started, then?”


	2. Drift, Session 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized way too late that I set an unintended precedent with the timeline in the last chapter - each chapter (with a few planned exceptions) will feature a therapy session and an out-of-session scene. Last chapter, those two things took place immediately after one another, and the first scene in this chapter takes place on the same day. The second scene in this chapter takes place a few weeks later. I tried to rearrange things to have this not be the case, but in the interest of keeping things in order and not ballooning the number of chapters, I decided to keep these two scenes together. Sorry if it's jarring. 
> 
> Additional warnings: this chapter contains discussion of witnessing a death, mentions of drugs, and discussion of car accidents. Let me know in the comments or at choomchoom on tumblr if you need details, or if you notice something that I should have warned for and haven't.

_Session notes: Drift sought out my services, which he discovered through my community advertising, after a recent traumatic experience related to his outlier power, precognition. Despite his seeking me out voluntarily, he has been reluctant to share much in the way of concrete information about the event or how he interacts with his ability. I suspect that his reticence is informed by a lifetime of not being believed when he discusses the visions. I hope that continued reassurance will convince him that I truly intend to help him._

“You’re usually very punctual. Anything to worry about?” Rung asked as he sat in his chair opposite Drift.

“You tell me, I guess. I got stuck in the elevator on the way up here. The workmen were…worryingly unconcerned. But I made it, at least. Eventually.”

“I’ll plan to speak with them after this session,” Rung said, making a note of it on a pad on his desk. “I’m glad you’re safe. How have you been, since last week?”

“Uh –” There was clearly something on Drift’s mind, something that he didn’t want to share. He was spending far too long coming up with an answer to Rung’s very simple question. “Fine, normal. I had my last physical therapy session, which is cool. Sorry, I’m still a little distracted by the elevator thing.”

“Do you want to talk some more about that?” Rung asked. The source of Drift’s distraction was surprising. Drift didn’t tend to worry over situations where he alone was in danger, to a concerning degree, but maybe the responses of the workmen had been inadequate enough that he was worried for others’ sake.

“I don’t know. It might not be important.”

“Drift, this is your time. If there’s anything on your mind that you think talking about might help with, it’s important.”

“I knew the elevator was going to stop,” Drift said immediately as Rung finished talking.

Rung nodded, giving Drift the space to elaborate if he’d like to. Drift assessed him, eyes guarded as though he was bracing himself for a reaction. Rung waited him out.

“It happened when I was right outside the building,” Drift said. “Like I said, the visions last just a few seconds, and I’m usually disoriented after. Sometimes they’re not things that are going to happen immediately – this one was. Those ones are usually worse.” The downward curve of Drift’s mouth as he paused made Rung make a mental note to try to circle back to that. “There was someone else in it. That’s not uncommon, but this was the first time that the person in it was someone I had never seen before.”

Drift looked up from his hands to scrutinize Rung again. “It’s good that you’re noticing patterns like that in the things you see,” Rung said. “Having a clear understanding of what’s in the purview of your visions is likely to make the anticipation of them less anxiety-inducing.”

“That isn’t really my problem,” Drift said. Rung put a pin in that too as Drift continued. If Drift was willing to say that, there was a chance that he finally trusted Rung enough to tell him what the problem he’d sought out Rung in order to address _was_. “I know that they’re all to do with my life and I know that they’re torture. I just don’t quite know what it means that he was in the vision. If it was a fluke, or if he…will be important to me in the future.” Drift looked again, this time with curiosity on his features instead of hostility. “What can Rodimus do?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

Drift shrugged, still only with the shoulder that hadn’t been in a sling when Rung had first met him. “Worth a shot.”

“So, you say that you don’t know whether Rodimus will become an important figure in your life,” Rung said. The implications of two of his patients becoming friendly, or whatever Drift was imagining, was a question he could shelve for another time. “You say it like you don’t believe you have control over the outcome.”

“I don’t have control over it,” Drift said. “Well, not in a free-will kind of way, at least.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

Drift crossed his arms and looked down at them. “The things I see don’t _have_ to happen,” he said. “I can make decisions that prevent them. But.”

Rung waited, legitimately wondering what the caveat Drift was trying to describe might be. Drift wasn’t the first precognitive Rung had ever worked with, but Thunderclash had been so much more forthcoming.

“My visions don’t necessarily show what’s going to come to pass,” he said. “They show the best-case scenario.”

Well, from what Rung knew of precognition, that was just wrong, but he nodded in acknowledgement. “How did you reach that understanding of your ability?”

Drift curled up into an even more defensive position in his seat. “You really want to know?”

“If you feel you’d like to tell me, yes.” _Especially if it’s relevant to why you sought me out_.

“I was…a teenager. I was going to qualify that, but,” Drift did his usual one-shouldered shrug, jerky with the tension wound through his body. “That’s all there is to it, really. I was young. I was stupid.”

If he didn’t think it might spook Drift out of revealing the rest of the story, Rung would have objected to the negative self-talk. As it was, he sat still and listened.

“I had this…person. We…god, we were teenagers. We never talked about what we were. I wish I could say _boyfriend_ , but I have no idea if that’s what he would have wanted, so I just…don’t talk about it, I guess.” Drift took a second to compose himself, eyes locked on the leg of Rung’s desk. “His name was Gasket. He was my world. And I got him killed.”

Drift looked up at Rung at that one, question and vulnerability bare on his face. Rung tilted his head to show he was listening without giving the impression that he agreed with what Drift was saying.

“We had just bought a bag of weed, which we distributed to kids at school, so it was. Kind of a lot. Getting caught with it would have been bad. And just. Throwing it in a bush wasn’t an option because I was _so fucking stupid_. I’m getting ahead of myself. I had a vision as we were walking away. Usually they’re like normal memories – I forget the details. Not this one. It started with us turning the corner we usually turned to walk home from where we were, and ended with Gasket getting arrested. So I grabbed his arm, and I turned us around to go a different way.” Drift took a shuddering breath and rolled his shoulders before re-crossing his arms. “Sorry. I had the vision, and I turned around, and we went the other way. We took this shortcut we’d taken a hundred times, scaling these rocks on the side of the highway to get to street level without walking like a mile around to get to the walkway on the bridge. It wasn’t safe. It obviously wasn’t safe. But it had always felt safe. Until this time. Gasket fell. Whatever rock he’d grabbed onto slipped and he fell and a car hit him.” Drift stopped to breathe, eyes squeezed shut.

When it was clear that Drift didn’t plan to continue from there, Rung spoke. “I am so sorry that you experienced that,” he said. “And I’m grateful that you trusted me with that story.” After that, Rung had to pause and sort out his thoughts. He couldn’t deny that the tragedy Drift had described had happened as a direct result of Drift’s outlier ability. He couldn’t deny that it was a horrible thing to have happen. And trying to reassure Drift that it wasn’t always how abilities like his worked, after that, would probably have the same effect on Drift as denying the truths of the situation.

“That’s not the only time,” Drift said. “There was the car crash, too, because I was naïve enough to think that maybe things had changed. Usually, though, I just let them happen.”

“The car crash that precipitated our first meeting, you mean?”

“Yeah. I…no. I can’t talk about that right now.”

“That’s alright, Drift. We can take this at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”

_End of session notes: I’ve made progress in understanding how Drift connects with his outlier ability. That progress has demonstrated to me that we have a long road ahead of us. Drift’s core beliefs regarding his power are informed by what sound like universally aversive experiences, and I don’t yet know how I’ll convince him that those experiences do not define his ability. He experienced a traumatic loss when he was young that will make my job more difficult, but this session has provided me with initial direction._

 

* * *

 

 

_Two weeks later_

 

“You nervous?” Drift asked as he closed the passenger door.

“No?” Rodimus answered, realizing as it slipped out that that was probably the wrong answer – he _was_ about to take charge of a two-ton hunk of metal that could _easily_ kill people if he wasn’t careful. “Actually, yes.”

Drift chuckled at whatever he could see of Rodimus’s thought process. “Either way – we’ll go slow,” he said. “Do you know how to get it started?”

“Stick the key in and turn it,” Rodimus said.

Drift nodded approvingly. “Do that,” he said. “We’ll let it run for a bit while I show you the other buttons and stuff, get a feel for it. How did you end up with a car when you can’t drive, anyway?”

“My…uh…” Rodimus had never been able to come up with a good word for what Optimus was to him, especially not an honest one he could use with people he didn’t need to lie to. “Dad? Not, like, my biological dad but…uh, he’s a friend of my social worker’s from when I was a teenager, and I lived with him for a while in high school…”

“Your dad,” Drift said gently. “I don’t see any reason you can’t call him that.”

“Okay,” said Rodimus.

“Go on.”

“Yeah, he moved to New York for work last year. He was keeping the car here in case he decided to move back sometime soon, but I think things changed over there, so he gave it to me instead of selling it,” he said. “He took me driving a few times the last time he was here, I think he assumed I’d sign up for lessons or something. I was planning to, I just never got around to it.”

Drift just nodded, and Rodimus tried to take his silence as non-judgmental. He stuck the key in the ignition and twisted, and the car roared to life beneath him.

“Let’s start with some laps around the parking lot,” Drift said.

Rodimus eased his way out of the parking spot and started crawling toward the end of the row, keeping the speedometer at about five miles an hour.

“I get turning, and all the other basics, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of roundabouts,” Rodimus said. “Is there a trick to it? Count the exits? Don’t believe the GPS when it tells you to turn left?”

“The trick to those is screw up a few times and then know where you’re going,” Drift said. They chatted a little longer about various kinds of road difficulties, until Rodimus was confident enough making circles around the parking lot to officially be bored.

“I think I can drive to Starbucks,” Rodimus suggested. “I know the way, I’ve walked there, there’s a parking lot and there’s only the two traffic lights.

In his peripheral vision, he could see Drift nodding. “Go for it.”

Rodimus pulled up to the driveway to his apartment complex, put on his turn signal, and made a right.

“What’s the speed limit here?” Drift asked.

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“That was a test. It’s 25, we just passed a sign. You have to pay attention to those.”

“Okay.” Rodimus increased his speed so that his speedometer matched the sign. Then a stop sign came up and he had to slam the breaks hard enough for his seatbelt to strain to stop in time. He looked at Drift, expecting some kind of admonishment.

Drift just shrugged. “That’s the kind of thing you get the hang of,” he said. Another car had just pulled up to the stop sign at Rodimus’s right. “You have right of way, go.”

Rodimus went, pushing the pedal too hard and jerking the car forward. He didn’t even bother to look at Drift this time, just made a mental note to use less pressure in the future. 

“Oh, shit, I forgot about this,” Rodimus said, spying a roadblock for some construction up ahead. When he’d walked to Starbucks the weekend before, he’d taken a walking path between two buildings to get around the block – it hadn’t even registered, because he’d been doing the same thing for the past month and a half. “Uh, do you know where to go from here?”

“You don’t?”

“ _No I don’t_.” Rodimus’s piss-poor sense of direction had always been a source of barely-amicable jokes from Optimus.

“Okay. Take a right at the stop sign right before the construction,” Drift said.

Rodimus was so relieved to hear that instead of _I can’t believe you can’t figure out an alternate route by yourself, it’s your neighborhood_ that he barely registered Drift’s hands curling into fists.

“Now what?” Rodimus asked after making the turn. There wasn’t a turnoff for a while because they were passing a high school on one side and a park on the other, but Rodimus would rather be prepared in advance.

After another moment of silence, he snuck a glance over at Drift. Drift was sitting up stiffly in his seat, shoulders hiked up uncomfortably. His eyes were wide and his lips were pressed together, in an effort Rodimus recognized to keep it together.

“Drift?”

“Pull over, please.” The words spilled out in one breath, Drift barely moving as he spoke.

Rodimus did one better. He saw an entrance to a parking lot for the park up ahead and turned in, parking sloppily in the empty lot. He turned the car off and turned his attention on Drift.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Drift just shook his head. He took an effortful inhale and said, “Sorry. It’s not you. I just need a minute.”

Rodimus took the hint to shut up and bounced his leg as he waited.

Drift curled in on himself, covering his face with his hands, sounding like he was trying very hard to keep his breathing even. “Sorry,” he said.

 _Oh_ , they were under no circumstances doing this. “Hey, remember how you met me?” Rodimus asked. “You don’t need to apologize. Is it cool if I touch you?” Drift’s back was so tense it hurt to look at.

Drift shook his head vigorously and Rodimus scooched a little further into his own space on his side of the car. “Okay.”

Rodimus waited a few excruciating minutes, unsure where to look as Drift calmed himself down in jerky stages. He settled on watching the leaves sway in the wind out the window, keeping his eyes off of Drift, letting him have what tiny bit of privacy Rodimus could give without leaving the car and making it weird.

“Sorry,” Drift said again when his breathing had finally really eased.

“Hey –”

“I know, but I mean it,” Drift said. “I shouldn’t have said yes to this. I should have guessed that something like this would happen.”

“Again, remember how we met. You don’t have to shut yourself off from everything just because it might be triggering.”

“It’s not everything. It’s very specific. I haven’t…I haven’t told you what I can do.”

Rodimus’s heart sank. He’d kind of hoped that they wouldn’t get to that for a while. But if talking about it would help Drift, he was willing to have the conversation.

“It – I don’t know a lot about outlier powers, but some people have normal ones, right? They can read thoughts, or teleport, or make plants grow. Things that make _sense_.”

“Lotta people would say that none of those things make sense,” Rodimus said.

A wave of warmth flowed through Rodimus’s chest when that elicited a smile from Drift, who was still hunched over, shaking hands clasped together. “Yeah, fair. But. Mine is so much dumber.”

“That sounds like the kind of characterization of your ability that Rung wouldn’t let you use.”

“I can see the future,” Drift said.

All of Rodimus’s smooth talk sailed right out of his brain. “What?”

Drift smirked, but this time there was no joy behind it. “I know, right? It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense. It messes with all our perceptions of the way that _time_ works, and free will, and choice. But it’s true.”

“I believe you,” Rodimus said, because that seemed like the sort of thing that Drift needed to hear.

“Thank you,” Drift said. “Not gonna lie, that was a concern. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you is you deserve to know –”

Rodimus held up a hand to stall that one in its tracks. “You deserve your privacy more than I deserve to know anything,” Rodimus said. “You haven’t done anything to hurt me – you taught me some stuff about driving, and when it started turning into a dangerous situation, you told me to pull over. You don’t owe me anything.”

“Okay,” Drift said. “I still want to tell you, if that’s alright.”

He didn’t look like that was what he wanted. He looked like he would rather be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. But _he_ deserved the benefit of the doubt. He deserved for Rodimus to believe him. Rodimus nodded him on.

“This was about five months ago,” Drift said. “I was driving on the highway, which I did three times a week to go to and from my old dojo. And I had a vision. They’re like…I shouldn’t have been driving in the first place, with this power. I can’t sense any of my surroundings when one of them comes. I forget where I am. I wake up convinced that it’s five years ago, sometimes. Sometimes I faint. This time…I maintained control of the car, somehow. Because that was what the vision said would happen. The visions predict things that happen immediately and things up to about two months in the future. This one I _knew_ was right about to happen. I was going to hit the back of a car that skidded because another car swerved into their lane in front of them and my car was going to swing out in front of both lanes and there was going to be a huge, huge accident. People would have died. I couldn’t even count how many.”

Rodimus’s chest was tight as he listened. The story, and the strain in Drift’s voice as he tried to articulate it, felt painfully familiar.

“I couldn’t be responsible for that. So I did something I had promised I would never do again,” Drift said. Rodimus noted the _again_ with a pang – surely there was an equally, if not more unpleasant story in that one quiet word. “I prevented it. I didn’t know how much time I had, so I just pulled to the side to get off the highway and my car flipped over the guardrail. I survived,” he said quickly, as if to mitigate the horror of the rest of it. “I was really hurt – I was in physical therapy until the week before we met – but I lived. And of course, the pileup still happened. I don’t know if it was better or worse without me.”

“Of course?” Rodimus asked.

“Trying to interfere _doesn’t work_. The things I’m shown…they’re never things that I can make better,” Drift said. “It’s had…variable consequences over the years. But this…this was the one I almost died for. And the body count might have been higher the way it happened in reality. I have no way of knowing. It’s not even _that bad_ , compared to some stuff.”

That sentence incited the most powerful urge to hug that Rodimus had ever felt in his entire life.

“But it’s possible that that’s the last time I was in a car, so naturally it’s what I freak out about now.” Drift ran a hand through his hair in faux-nonchalance. “The reason – I don’t know if I articulated this – the reason I said I should have told you in the first place is that I might white out and not be responsive for a few seconds, and if you have a question or if you do something dangerous because you’re inexperienced, that would be bad. That’s the logical level, and on another, also real level, I worry being around you because I really like you and I want good things for you and history has proven that only bad things happen around me.”

Rodimus waited a few seconds, but Drift seemed to be done now. “Thank you for trusting me with all that,” he said, and Drift’s shoulders seemed to relax a fraction at the lack of immediate condemnation. “I agree that that’s maybe something you should have told me to start – the thing about whiting out, I mean – but I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker for doing lessons. It’s a few seconds, right? That’s like if another driving teacher stopped paying attention to send a text. If I’m not comfortable, I can pull over.”

Cautiously, Drift nodded.

“As for the other thing,” Rodimus started. Drift tensed up again and Rodimus may not be a mind-reader, but he could sense _I wish I hadn’t told him that_ running through Drift’s thoughts all the same. Rodimus tried to figure out what to say that would make him stop regretting it. He shrugged to ease some of the tension that had built in his own body. “Same here, about the bad things happening. I have…stories, of my own. But maybe I don’t have enough of them, or maybe I’m just bad at pattern recognition, but I still think that the future might be better.”

Drift sat with that as time stretched. He loosened the grasp that his hands had on each other and then unclasped them entirely. “Let’s go to Starbucks,” he said. “I know the way.”

Rodimus restarted the car, half-grateful and half-dismayed that the conversation had ended without Rodimus repaying Drift’s honesty and telling Drift what he could do. What he had done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Prowl!


	3. Prowl, Session 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lighter one, content-wise. Contains descriptions of hypervigilance demonstrated by a non-POV character.

_Session notes: Prowl has an anxiety disorder that is inseparable from his outlier power. He can compute the probable outcomes based on every factor involved in a situation. He notices everything. Previous therapists have attempted to treat the anxiety symptoms in isolation, but he has reported no success from these attempts. I must confess that Prowl’s particular condition has me at a loss for how to treat it. The objective of the current session is to build trust so that he will reveal more to me._

Rung’s assessment of the state of his office as he stood to open the door was more careful than usual. Prowl would notice every speck of dust, every misplaced file, every change in the appearance of the potted plants on the windowsill. Rung had a responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of his other patients even in the face of Prowl’s challenging power. He also had to ensure that he himself was centered and prepared for the session, his preoccupations pushed far enough down that he could consider them dealt with for now. After a few extra moments of assessment, he was ready.

He opened the door and held it, searching the waiting room for his patient. Prowl was already looking towards him when he met his eyes. “Good afternoon, Prowl,” Rung said. “Come inside.”

Prowl followed him through the door, eyes jumping all around the room, as they always did. That was something Rung hoped to work on – managing Prowl’s tendency to characterize every detail as significant. His current state of constant hypervigilance put a strain on his mind that worried Rung – he wondered if there might be an amount of stress Prowl could take before the strategies that Rung had in mind might no longer be productive.

But Rung had no reason to believe that Prowl had reached that point. “How are you feeling today?” he asked, turning his chair toward the couch. He always felt more exposed in his usual position with Prowl than he did with his other patients, but Rung refused to treat Prowl differently because of the nature of his ability. All Rung could do was try to be aware but not too aware of his body language as they conversed, because Prowl could read things from the way Rung positioned himself before Rung had even finished thinking them. That wasn’t a skill that came naturally with Prowl’s ability, according to Rung’s research. It was a skill that Prowl had chosen to hone, and if Rung had known him at the time, he would have discouraged Prowl from doing so. Prowl’s ability to read body language and the anxiety that underlay it worked together to make establishing trust with him an almost insurmountable barrier.

“I’m feeling fine,” said Prowl as he scrutinized the plants and flicked occasional glances to the ceiling and sparsely decorated walls. “You’ve been overwatering your succulents again.”

“Thank you for the observation. I’ve been trying to find the right balance,” Rung said. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about, to get started?”

Prowl was quiet for a moment, his mind probably working doggedly to process every possible meaning and ulterior motive of Rung’s simple, honest question. Rung waited patiently, observing the details of his office as well. It could do with a dusting, especially the precious shelf of models. There were pretzel crumbs on his mousepad that he really ought to have cleared away before letting Prowl come in here. Or perhaps not – if Prowl perceived Rung as a messy eater, it was an inconsequential flaw that might make him more human and trustworthy in Prowl’s mind. Rung knew that if he’d considered that before the session, if he’d set the pretzel crumbs up deliberately, Prowl would have seen right through it. Interacting with him was dizzyingly complex, but a problem that Rung had no interest in shying away from.

 “I met another outlier,” Prowl said, dragging Rung out of his train of thought.

Rung felt himself blink in surprise. Prowl had never spoken about the people in his life – Rung’s impression was that he kept to himself outside of the classes he was taking for his forensic science program at the local university. “Tell me more,” Rung said, shoving down all the more specific questions that had sprung to mind.

“I was in the cafeteria at the medical school,” Prowl said. “I have a lab in the building, so I sometimes get lunch there after. There was this student behind me in line who kept paying attention to me. I ignored it, I thought he was just…checking me out, at first, and then he followed me over to the elevators and asked me if we could talk. I – that sounds creepy, when that’s all you know about the situation. But it wasn’t creepy. He was hoping I’d say yes, and he really wanted what he was asking for. So I said yes. He asked if we could sit down somewhere, so we went to one of the booths in the café. You’d appreciate that, actually – I ate lunch in the café.”

Rung was much more impressed that Prowl had had a meaningful conversation with another person – and that he was telling Rung about it – but he nodded his head, encouraging Prowl to continue.

“He had trouble getting out what he was trying to say, at first. I thought he might be trying to ask me out, or something.” Rung was surprised that Prowl had stayed despite thinking that, and did his best not to show it. “But he told me that he can read thoughts, and that my thoughts were unlike any he’d ever heard.” Prowl frowned. “When I say it like that, it still sounds like he was flirting.”

Rung took the opening to ask, “How would you have felt if he was?”

Prowl reeled back a little on that, sitting up straighter in his seat. He took a moment before responding. “I couldn’t date anyone,” he said. “I’m barely managing my own life as it is. It’s not under consideration.”

“None of that answered my question,” Rung said, effortfully keeping a smile off his face. Fond as it may have been, Prowl would more than likely interpret it as teasing.

“I wouldn’t have gotten up and walked away if it turned out he had been flirting,” Prowl said. “Okay? With most people, I probably would have. But I still don’t know if he was or not.”

“Okay,” Rung said. “We can move on from that. What happened next?”

“He asked what he had to do to make me believe him. I said that I already believed him. That I could tell when people are lying, and that he should already know that. He smiled at me and he agreed. He had to run to a class, so he asked if he could give me his number. Exactly like that – I think he must have understood that I was…overwhelmed, already, by the situation, and that giving me the power over what happened next might help. He was right. It’s…still terrifying, to be honest. A mind-reader. Have you known anyone like that?”

Rung was always wary when Prowl asked him a direct question – he couldn’t lie without Prowl catching it, but he had patient confidentiality and other secrets to protect. Luckily, this question was harmless as long as Prowl didn’t ask for any details. “I have.”

“I haven’t contacted him yet,” Prowl said. “I…think I might like to? I – we only spoke for a few minutes, but despite knowing that he was in my head, it was nice to talk to someone who could understand why I’m the way I am.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Rung said.

“You do?” For an instant, Prowl looked caught off-guard. Despite the fact that the topic of conversation was Prowl’s personal life, Rung realized that it was far from Prowl’s area of expertise. During all of their conversations about Prowl’s powers, and even his work, Prowl had never seemed surprised by anything Rung had said. It was an interesting change, and Rung took note of it, careful to keep his thoughts out of his expression.

“I do,” said Rung. “But it’s your life, Prowl, and your choice.”

Prowl nodded, eyes back to focusing on the plants. “I’ll keep thinking about it.”

Rung nodded and let Prowl change the subject.

_End of session notes: Most encouraging session yet. Prowl has found a reason to work on his problems with his power. He also informed me that he is in contact with another outlier with ties to the University. The telepath he spoke of is sure to be of interest to the TA but there’s a risk that if he’s contacted, Prowl will know that I’m culpable. I advise the TA to handle this with the utmost delicacy._

 

* * *

 

 

Chromedome liked studying in the library. The sheer number of people there could get overwhelming on bad days, but usually, the throb of concentration from the students surrounding him acted as a steadying background hum.

Prowl did not like the library. There were too many variables there demanding his attention for him to be able to focus on his own work. He hadn’t told Chromedome that explicitly, but Chromedome had inferred it between his tone and the scattered whirlwind that Chromedome perceived from his thoughts when Chromedome had suggested they go there.

Prowl didn’t like the library, so they weren’t in the library. They were in a conference room in the medical research building that Chromedome’s old lab had used for meetings. It was roomy and aesthetically pleasing, with a high ceiling and chairs scattered around a long table where each of them had more than enough room to spread out their respective books, laptops, notes, and snacks.

Chromedome started transferring notes from his Neuropsychopharmacology class into a Quizlet, letting himself relax with the monotonous work and the whirlwind buzz of Prowl’s thoughts. After a few minutes, though, he noticed that Prowl wasn’t typing. He looked up to check if something was wrong, but when he did, Prowl looked away from him so quickly it looked like he might have given himself whiplash.

So Chromedome was more interesting than whatever it was Prowl was working on. That was flattering.

Chromedome went back to work, making a game of trying not to catch Prowl’s gaze as Prowl openly stared at him. He finished with the vocabulary from his notes and turned to his textbook to see if there was anything in there that he’d missed.

“Are you concentrating on something important?”

 _Yes, but I’d rather talk to you_. “No.”

“When you say my thoughts don’t sound like anyone else’s – what do you mean?”

Chromedome took his attention away from his notes entirely and settled back to explain. “With most people, I hear their thoughts however they sound to them. Whether that’s half the chorus of a song on loop, or full sentences, or images, or a sentence they're iterating - developing. It’s words and images and I understand them, except when it’s in a language I don’t know, or if someone’s thinking really aggressively about, say, car maintenance and I just can’t follow what’s going on. With you, though…it’s not like you’re thinking in a different language, it’s like you’re thinking on a different plane of existence. My mind just can’t keep up. I never know what you’re going to say or do next. It’s like…if you speed up a video too much – four, five times – until all you hear are blips, I guess would be the best comparison. You think about so much, so fast. It’s amazing. I feel like I can get to know you on your terms, in a way I’ve never been able to with anyone else.”

“I'm not sure I know what my terms are,” Prowl said, looking down at his notes, finally, looking like he might be uncomfortable with the scrutiny being turned on him. Anyone else and Chromedome would have known that for certain. Getting to know Prowl was testing his underdeveloped ability to read people.

“Whatever you don’t want me to know, I don’t have to know,” Chromedome said with a shrug. The idea of secrets between them was thrilling. Chromedome was sick to death of transparency.

“I think I want you to understand how my power works,” Prowl said. “You never gave me the chance.”

“I’ll admit I’ve been curious.”

That seemed to be a relief to Prowl, who flicked his eyes back up at Chromedome with what looked like _maybe_ a tiny smile. “My senses are more acute than most people’s,” he said. “There’s a range of normal, for things like that, and I’m off the scale. It coexists with something in my brain that allows me to not only perceive but process all of it. I can hear conversations on the next floor of a building, and I can’t help but follow along and come up with a guess for how it will resolve.”

“The last bit sounds like it might be your personality,” said Chromedome. Prowl hadn’t seemed like someone with a particular appreciation for tact, and tactless was Chromedome’s natural state.

“Maybe it is. It is, is the truth. My personality and my…ability…are inextricably tied together. I might be an entirely different person if I didn't have it.”

“Would you want that?” Chromedome asked. He’d been asked the same, enough times, and before tonight he’d always lied about the answer.

“No,” said Prowl. “What about you? Would you give up your power?”

“No,” Chromedome said. “Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Rodimus!


	4. Rodimus, Session 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big warning for descriptions of torture in the second scene. if that's something you'd rather skip, all the relevant information is summarized in the end notes. i also added a tag for torture as this isn't the only time it comes up

Rodimus felt that he hadn’t parked quite perfectly, but when he looked over at Drift, Drift gave him a nod that Rodimus decided meant that he could turn off the car. “It’s crowded today,” he said. The dark parking lot was filled to at least a hundred yards out from the store and people were everywhere, pushing carts and carrying bags through rows of crawling cars.

“I guess people are nesting for Thanksgiving eve,” Drift said. “Shall we?”

Rodimus grimaced – he’d hoped that their walk from the car to the grocery store would be negligibly short, like it had been most times that they’d come here late at night to avoid the place’s usual crowds.

Drift noticed. Of course Drift noticed. He didn’t say anything, but he tilted his head at Rodimus, mouth turned down with concern.

Rodimus shook his head at the implication that anything was wrong and got out of the car. It was like thirty degrees and he hadn’t thought to grab more than a thin sweatshirt, whatever. He was fine, he’d had so much worse. He crossed his arms tightly as he locked the car and then tucked his hands into his elbows for the windy walk into the store. Fuck him, was that a _snowflake_?

Rodimus startled when his shoulders were suddenly enveloped in warmth. He looked behind him to see Drift, now down to his own sweatshirt, having draped his heavy coat over Rodimus. At the eye contact, Drift smiled a little, sending a funny pang through Rodimus’s chest, and reached over to adjust it more firmly around his shoulders. “Everything alright?” he asked, smile never quite leaving his face. His hand was still loosely hanging onto the lapel of the coat, light pressure against Rodimus’s sternum.

Rodimus uncrossed his arms to pull the coat more securely around himself. Drift went to release it, but Rodimus caught his hand before he could pull away. When Rodimus loosened his grip, Drift didn’t try to pull back, just kept their hands lightly clasped together.

Oh, this was happening. Rodimus stepped closer. Drift didn’t step back. Rodimus, ignoring the cold, reached his free hand up to brush at the underside of Drift’s jaw with the pads of his fingers. “Am I reading this right?” he asked. It was the question he’d been asking himself for weeks now, as he and Drift warmed up to each other and navigated the shape of their sudden intense friendship. It seemed like the right time to ask it out loud, in the back corner of a grocery store parking lot after dusk, with the first snowflakes of the winter falling around them.

Drift didn’t respond. Not with words, at least. He tightened his hold on Rodimus’s hand and used the other to grab onto the zipper of the jacket, pulling Rodimus another step closer, and then Drift’s lips were on his.

His mouth was as soft as it looked, and Rodimus closed his eyes, forgetting the cold, forgetting that they were outdoors in public, forgetting everything but the firm comforting pressure of Drift’s hand in his, pressed between their bodies, and the softness of Drift’s lips, the intentional but almost shy way that Drift kissed, pulling back slightly ever so often before moving back in with firm, even movements.

Rodimus could have stayed there all his life, but soon enough his body betrayed him with a shiver. Drift eased back, moving the hand that he’d shifted from the lapel of the coat to Rodimus’s lower back up and down for friction. Rodimus melted into it.

“We should talk,” Drift said.

Rodimus felt his eyes go wide.

“Oh god. No. Whoops! I’m very excited about this, and I really like you! What I meant is…I don’t really want to go in there right now.”

“Me neither,” Rodimus said, sinking back into the steadying influence of Drift’s hands on him.

“Let’s go back to yours and order a pizza,” Drift said. “If that’s okay? We can shop early tomorrow.”

Rodimus felt his eyebrows lift at _tomorrow_. Drift noticed and smiled. Then, because he _sucked_ , he let go of Rodimus and walked around to the passenger side of the car.

The car had already cooled down from sitting in the parking lot, and Rodimus pulled Drift’s jacket closer around his front as he waited for Drift to buckle his seatbelt. He backed out of the spot and pulled out onto the road.

“You know I’m trans, right?” Rodimus asked, knowing that this was _not the time_ but unable to bear another second of wondering if everything he was hoping would come of tonight would come crashing down around him at that sometimes-inconvenient fact.

“That has no bearing whatsoever on the way I feel about you,” Drift said. “Please focus on the road.”

Rodimus stopped the car a little too fast at a light that had turned yellow at that liminal time when he wasn’t sure whether to stop or go. The seatbelt dug into Rodimus’s chest, muffled by Drift’s thick coat, and Rodimus snuck a sheepish glance at his passenger. “Sorry.”

Drift was smiling again and just shook his head a little. Rodimus took the hint and looked back at the road.

The ten-minute drive seemed to stretch five times that long with Rodimus hyperaware of Drift’s every breath and shift in position beside him. When he finally pulled into his designated spot at his apartment complex, he couldn’t wait another minute to do what he’d been fantasizing about the whole ride; he turned the car off, found Drift’s hand as it was about to fumble with the seatbelt, caught Drift’s eye, and kissed him again.

 

* * *

 

 

_Session notes: Rodimus has made excellent progress adjusting to life outside the TA. He reported to me previously that he’s found a job, and I have the impression that he’s befriended another of my patients. I’ve heard very little about this relationship from either party, and I’m very curious about it, but it would be counterproductive for me to be seen as prying into their personal lives. While Rodimus’s progress thus far has been consistent, I am not yet considering discontinuing his sessions. There is clearly past trauma that he hasn’t disclosed to me, and I worry that a sudden difficulty with his ability or another triggering experience could lead to a level of struggle that I haven’t yet seen him face._

Rodimus looked slightly more off-kilter than Rung was used to. He walked into the office and sat down, hiking a leg up to cross over his knee immediately. Ignoring the selection of fidget toys that Rung now kept on the table next to the couch, he reached forward to tangle his shoelace around his fingers. His shoulders were tensed, as though he was bracing himself for or against something.

Rung braced himself as well. He had the sneaking suspicion that Rodimus was ready to talk.

“Hello, Rodimus.” Rung began, as normal. “How are you doing today?”

“I’m alright,” Rodimus said. It sounded to Rung like an honest answer, indicating that whatever Rodimus had walked in wanting to talk about was more significant than something that had affected him specifically today. “How are you, Rung?”

“I’m doing well.” That was technically a lie, but this hour wasn’t about Rung. He decided to get right to the heart of things – others would prefer that he ease into it, but he suspected that Rodimus would appreciate the opportunity. “Anything in particular you’d like to talk about?”

“Maybe?” Rodimus said. “I had a few questions I wanted to ask you, actually.”

Rung nodded. The TA should have educated Rodimus about his ability when he was there, but it wouldn’t surprise Rung if Rodimus hadn’t paid much attention to the materials. “Of course.”

“What do you think my program at the TA was like?”

Rung felt his brow furrow in confusion at the unexpected direction, but he’d already promised to answer. “I expect that it was difficult for you, based on our first conversation about it.”

“I don’t mean _how do you think I felt about it_. I mean _what do you think they did?_ ”

That answer was easy enough to give, so while Rung spoke he tried to run through the possibilities in his mind of why Rodimus might be asking. “I can’t say for sure, as the elemental program was in its infancy when I left the organization more than a  year ago. We were working with a water elemental at the time, doing research on the neural mechanisms of their control over their outlier ability.” Nautica had been an absolute joy to work with, and Rung found himself missing her. She’d been eager to peer over Rung and Froid’s shoulders at her own MRI results, had offered enough of her own theories about the physics of outlier abilities that Rung had been seriously considering trying to coauthor a paper with her when she was no longer his research participant. But then everything had happened with Skids, Rung had left the TA in a rush, and they’d fallen out of contact. Anyway – “What we’d come up with at the time was that elemental power – at least theirs, we weren’t making generalizations yet – was associated with activation in the limbic system, which is the major emotional center of the brain. This individual had found, anecdotally, that they had to be feeling a strong emotion of any valence – good or bad – in order to be able to use their ability. I have no idea whether they developed a program out of that, but I suppose such a program would focus on mindfulness meditation and other mechanisms of emotional control alongside education about your ability and outlier abilities in general.”

Rodimus curled forward and put his head in his hands. “Why did you quit?” he asked, voice wavering.

“As I said, my priorities diverged from those of the organization. My main professional interest has always been outlier mental health, but that has never quite fallen under the mission statement of the TA, which is ensuring that non-outliers are kept safe.” Rung had been hoping to find a way to establish an outlier mental health clinic inside the TA for years before everything had gone down with Skids, but now Rung’s professional interests were just a convenient buffer against questions like that.

“And you really won’t tell them what I say here?”

“I promise.”

“I should never have gone in there. I regret it every day of my life.”

Rodimus was silent for a moment, perhaps bracing himself. Rung dared to take the reins. “What happened, Rodimus?”

“You were right about the emotions thing, but not how they went about it. They didn’t try to teach me to control my emotions. They controlled them for me. They figured out how far they could push me without me setting something on fire, and then they pushed further. And they did it again until I could handle it.”

Cold fear gripped Rung’s chest. This was not what he’d expected to be dealing with at all – and perhaps his own willful naivete was at fault for that.

“I went into that place a person. And I came out…I don’t even know what I am anymore.”

“You are a person, Rodimus. No matter what they did, they cannot take that away from you.”

“You don’t know what they did.”

“So tell me, and we’ll see if my answer changes.” It was an awful, manipulative, unethical way to get information from a patient, especially if this session was as huge a leap of trust for Rodimus as Rung suspected. But Rung needed to hear it from Rodimus. _For_ Rodimus, so Rung could better understand him. And for himself, so that he wouldn’t leave this session and go do something incredibly stupid.

“They started with drugs,” Rodimus said. He leaned back and picked up a fidget spinner, deliberately staring at that instead of at Rung. “I know. That sounds bad. Or maybe not. It escalated from there.”

Rodimus had clearly rehearsed this. Rung only nodded, braced to keep a neutral expression for the duration.

“I don’t know what they were giving me,” Rodimus said. “I was feeling everything at once, I was hallucinating a lot. They kept me in this stone-walled room underground, it was cold and damp and horrible. Before I figured out their game, I was flaming out just to keep warm. I don’t remember much of the first week or so. A couple of times, someone in a facemask came in with a syringe and told me that if I wanted them to stop, I had to stop with the fires. I just couldn’t control it, at first. I would wake up having lost whole days. After that, I was insolent about it for a bit. Then they gave me another dose without giving me food and I realized how much power they had – how easily they could kill me. I tried to get out of the room, but couldn’t. So I tried. I stopped.

“I thought it was over, for a minute there.” Rodimus had gotten good with the fidget spinner, never letting it slow down as it whirled around and around. “They took me out of the cell, let me shower, and took me to meet with someone in an office. He asked me if I thought I had control. I said yes, and he said that I would just have to pass an exam and I could get out.

“Turns out, they’d been recording all the things I yelled when I was hallucinating. They asked me to think about those things, and it was still hard, but I could do it. Then they asked me to talk about them and I said I wouldn’t, because it’s not their fucking business. Then they stopped asking and started trying to torture it out of me.”

“Rodimus, I’m so sorry.” Rung tried to hide his struggle to process what Rodimus was telling him. The use of psychoactive drugs to induce extreme emotion in a controlled environment in order to extinguish the use of outlier powers as an operant response to emotional extremes wasn’t a half-bad concept, but the horrid environment and abusive supervision that Rodimus had described sent chills down Rung’s spine. But this? The combination of psychological and physical torture that had come after? That hadn’t been for Rodimus’s benefit at all. That had been for Froid, as part of his attempts – long stifled by Rung – to explore the very limits of outlier abilities. Rung was not a violent person. But in that moment, he wanted to do many violent things to his former colleague.

“I told them everything they wanted to know. It wasn’t enough. That’s where most of the escalation that I mentioned at the beginning happened,” Rodimus said. “They would scare me by making me think I was drowning, and I would fight back, and they would tell me they were disappointed and do it again. When I managed to keep the fear – or anger, or physical pain, or _whatever_ – down enough to stand it, they would find something new to try. They did the debriefing routine a couple more times in there – probably to keep me from giving up. If they hadn’t actually released me when they did, it would have stopped working.” Rodimus halted the fidget spinner with his free hand and held onto it. “That’s what happened.”

“Thank you for trusting me with all of this, Rodimus,” Rung started, because it was his default for difficult stories and default seemed better than acting on his instinct to scream or hit something. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, and I’m very grateful that you made it out alive.”

“I’m not telling you because I like you. I’m telling you because I want it to _end_. I want to get better. I want you to fix me.”

“I suspect you already understand that that isn’t what I do.”

“Isn’t it? I have these nightmares all the time, random things on the street – fucking _elevators_ terrify me now, because they’re the same shape as that cell. I was in there for _months_ and everything I remember is awful. Can’t you do _something_ to just…make it stop?”

“I can help you move forward from that, but you’re going to need to do the work yourself.”

“I know. I know that. I – I really do want to get better. It didn’t matter so much when I first got out – all I had to do was survive, that didn’t take much in the way of, you know, feeling things. But now there’s, uh – there’s someone in my life who I’d like to do better than that for.”

It was obvious that he was talking about Drift, but Rung knew not to push it. “You’re very brave for telling me these things, Rodimus, and I’m here to help you however I can.”

_End of session notes: Rodimus’s progress continues at the same rate and he reports no relapses or difficulty with his powers. Nothing else of note to mention._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the second scene, rodimus talks about his time in an inpatient program at the TA. it involved a lot of torture, ostensibly in the interest of teaching him to control his powers. Rung believes that part of it was, while terrible, genuinely focused on helping Rodimus gain better control, and another part was just for research purposes, and that Rodimus was lied to (by Froid or someone who works for him) about it being for his benefit. also, Rodimus implies again that his powers have been relevant to other traumas in his past. 
> 
> the very end of the chapter, starting with “Thank you for trusting me with all of this, Rodimus,” does not contain any detail about the torture & instead focuses on Rodimus's current feelings on the matter. 
> 
> please feel free to comment or message me at choomchoom on tumblr if i've forgotten to warn for anything that needs to be warned for, or if you want any additional details about the summarized session.


	5. Getaway, Encounter ??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short interlude. 
> 
> This chapter is where the "Mind Control" tag comes in. Torture warning in effect here, too. Sorry that it's a bleak couple of chapters. As always, feel free to message or comment with questions or comments about the warnings.

It was just after seven in the evening when Rung finally closed his laptop and began to methodically pack up his things to go home. Today’s session with Rodimus had been challenging, and he’d taken some time to take a walk around the park across the street to process it all before sitting back down and coming up with the bones of a treatment plan. The situation felt a bit more under his control now that he had something to work with, some direction to move in, but as he took in the dark sky outside the window, the dusty model ships tucked away on their shelf, and the sparse notes he’d managed to write down immediately after the session had ended, he was still overwhelmed by what he was facing.

The TA was dangerous, Rung knew. He hadn’t trusted the organization for a long time – hell, he was doing his level best to work against them. But somehow, still, he hadn’t imagined that his former employer would do _that_.

Rung’s heart ached for Rodimus, and, distasteful as it was to admit, Rodimus’s confession had hit his pride as well. Rung had worked there. He had believed in their mission for so long. That he hadn’t _known better_ despite having the resources to have worked it out was a blow.

Rung ruminated on the subject as he methodically packed up his briefcase and lunch bag, locked his office and the outer door to the waiting area, and walked down the hallway. He took the stairs to the bottom floor – he’d started doing so after Drift’s story about the elevator debacle, and it had become a habit. The side door from the stairwell led directly out to the parking lot. Rung noted as he pushed open the glass door that it was nearly empty.

The door swung shut, locking behind Rung as he made his way toward his car.

And then he froze.

For a moment, as always, his mind conjured up any possible thread, any possible way for this to be anything but what it was. Had he been thinking of something he’d forgotten and simply lost the train? Had he decided to stand here in the cool November air to center himself before making his way to his car?

No. He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He didn’t quite make peace with that until Getaway appeared in his line of sight.

“You usually come out the other door,” he said, crossing his arms and widening his stance as he stopped, leering in front of Rung. “Trying to avoid me?”

How was it that Rung hadn’t recognized the pull on his mind that Getaway could impose? He didn’t answer – Getaway didn’t want him to answer. The rhetorical question, and the moment Getaway took to smirk and gloat over it, were all the time Rung needed to summon the mental construct he’d prepared for exactly this situation.

All of Rung’s mind was encased inside a house. There were things outside the house – memories, thoughts – but they weren’t things Rung knew. They just existed, for him to potentially find later. Right now, Rung’s mind began and ended with the house.

Eventually, Getaway would figure out his game. Eventually, Getaway would break down the walls and discover the answers he was looking for. It might even happen tonight.

Rung visualized himself shutting the house’s front door. The house was Rung’s whole mind, and in the house, he didn’t know where Skids was.

“How was your day, doctor?” asked Getaway. Warming up to it; trying a new tactic this time.

“Unpleasant,” said Rung. “I had a patient tell me some disturbing things.”

“Of what sort?”

“That’s confidential,” said Rung. It was true. It was _true_ and Rung _believed it_.

But Getaway wanted more. The pull on Rung’s mind increased and he felt his mouth opening to speak, barely under his control. He edited the words on the way out, leaving out _TA_ with the last graspings of his will. “My patient was tortured because of his power. It was terrible to hear even secondhand. Are you so sick that you want the details?”

“Maybe I am.” Getaway stepped closer. Rung didn’t, couldn’t move. “That doesn’t sound like the polite therapeutic way to talk to someone.”

“I’m not your therapist,” Rung said, not relaxing his mental effort one iota even as Getaway tried to get him to let his guard down, pull him into this familiar argument.

“But you think I’m _sick_.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” said Rung. “My specialty is helping outliers learn to live and work with their powers. You have excellent control over your ability already. _I_ have nothing to offer you.”

“Well, doc, we both know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know where Skids is.” It was true. Skids’ location was not contained within the house.

Rung felt the pull of Getaway’s power increase. “I wish I could tell you where Skids was, so that you could go away and let me go home,” he said. It was true. It was the closest thing to what Getaway wanted that Rung’s mind contained.

“You don’t want to talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to go home. You’re exhausting, Getaway. You know you need help, but you only think you need mine.”

“I do not need _help_. I need information. _Where’s my partner?_ ”

The wave of Getaway’s influence made Rung nauseous, and he found himself gearing up to speak before he even quite recovered. Miraculously, the walls of the house held. There was nothing important outside the walls. “Like I’ve told you a dozen times – I don’t know.” Rung took a few breaths, recovering from the intensity of Getaway’s direct question. “And as I’ve voiced repeatedly, I believe that calling Skids your partner is a disserve to his decisions.”

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m the one trying to save him. What are you doing, doctor?”

 _If only you knew._ “Protecting him from you, for one.”

“I’m not the one he needs protecting from.”

Even Getaway must know what a blatant untruth that was. “Aren’t you?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Well, if you wanted to change that, I’ll be obligated to listen.” Rung tried to spread his arms out at his sides in a nonchalant shrug, but found himself jerked back, stumbling until he hit the rough brick wall of his office building.

Getaway hadn’t touched him. But he’d wanted Rung to move. And he’d wanted it to hurt.

Rung strained against his own arm as it came up and closed around his windpipe. The single light illuminating the sidewalk made Getaway’s teeth gleam as he smirked, watching Rung tighten his grip and wince in pain. “I could kill you,” Getaway said.

“Only if you want to,” said Rung in a rasp, before his fingers tightened again and he lost the ability to speak at all.

His mind was a house. He didn’t know where Skids was. He tried to keep ahold of his control as his lungs burned and dark spots stained his vision. This might work. If Getaway tortured him long enough, surely he would lose his grip on the mental tricks he’d only just mastered to keep Getaway out. He was going to fail S-

Rung’s hand released his throat and the next thing he knew he was on the ground. He didn’t remember falling, but he’d ended up there somehow, taking wheezing breaths of cool night air, blinking in a desperate futile effort to get his vision to stop swimming.

“Where’s Skids?” Getaway’s voice was nearly on Rung’s level. He’d yelled it, taking up Rung’s entire perception.

Rung was too short of breath to answer immediately, and that mistake on Getaway’s part gave Rung the split second he needed to get his mind back under control. “I. Don’t. Know.”

“Okay, doc. Have a good night. We’ll try again some other time.” Getaway stood, stretched his hands over his head lazily, and sauntered away into the night. Rung lay on the sidewalk, not quite daring to think about how close a call that had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Chromedome!


	6. Chromedome, Intake Interview

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no big warnings for this one, just some vague discussions of trauma.

_Session notes: I tipped off the TA to Chromedome’s existence, and they reached out and suggested that he meet with me for a psychological evaluation due to the distressing nature of his category of powers. I can only hope that Prowl doesn’t find out. I am relying on Prowl’s wariness toward divulging personal information – and hoping Chromedome, to some extent, shares it._

Rung adjusted his bowtie as he looked at himself on the monitor. He’d never seen a patient by videoconference before – Froid had been the expert on telepaths, back in the day – but he did his best to ignore the awkwardness of talking through his computer screen.

There was a beep as Chromedome connected, and then Rung could see a young man on the other end of the connection. He looked skeptical, or maybe just curious, and there was a stark dorm room wall visible behind him.

“Good afternoon, Chromedome,” Rung said. “Can you hear me alright?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Chromedome leaned back in his seat, lacing his fingers in front of him. He spoke into a headset that sounded like it must have a built-in mic.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Rung said. “I’m Rung, as you know. To get started, do you mind telling me what you understand of why you’re here?” The TA had scheduled this meeting, and Rung really didn’t know what they’d told Chromedome. It was also useful to get the measure of how a patient had interpreted a request for a mandatory session with a counselor.

“I was contacted by an organization that looks out for people with special abilities, and they want you do to a psych eval.”

Well, that was a gross mischaracterization of the TA, but the rest was easy enough for Rung to work with. “Excellent. It appears we’re on the same page. I’m going to ask you some questions for the sake of getting to know you, and then we’ll delve into your abilities a bit. If you’re uncomfortable answering a question, you can say so – this session is for your benefit. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Uh, I’m a student.”

“Very nice. What are you studying?”

“Neuroscience. You know what everyone says, I spend all that time on it just to figure out what’s wrong with me.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m familiar with the parlance.” That elicited a chuckle from Chromedome, and Rung found himself smiling gently, encouraging him to warm up. “Is your time mostly dedicated to classes or do you work with any labs, clubs?”

“I volunteer in a lab,” Chromedome replied. “We do long-term fMRI studies on populations at risk for degenerative brain disorders.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“I do. I might try to stay in the same lab as a tech after I graduate. There’s…really not a lot in neuroscience that I can handle.”

“Why do you say that?”

Now Chromedome hesitated. Rung could see even through the computer that he was evaluating whether he trusted Rung with the truth. “I worked in a lab that studied PTSD, my first year. It didn’t go well.”

Rung just nodded, asking for details with his silence.

“I liked working with the data, learning about the background of what we were doing, all of that,” he said. “Memory is so interesting, and we’re just starting to understand it, especially in humans. There was a psychiatrist doing the initial intake interviews, and my job was to run the MRI sessions. I was in a different room, but the machine was in the range that I can do this.” He gestured vaguely to his head. “Part of the protocol included exposing the participants to traumatic imagery and recording their brains’ responses. I didn’t have to do too much during it, which was good, because I could hear what they were thinking the whole time. I know the work was important, and we learned some stuff and published a paper from it, but every time I had to sit through one of those I couldn’t do anything the rest of the day. I would remember their memories and panic every time I closed my eyes.”

“That’s a terrible thing to witness, and it sounds to me like you made a very wise choice in removing yourself from that environment,” Rung began. He knew that he’d have to talk until something resonated, until Chromedome looked up. “That sort of consistent exposure to trauma can be difficult, even secondhand.”

“I did that for a whole semester,” Chromedome said. “I barely passed my classes. I was spending all of my time researching this thing I can do on the internet, trying to find a way to turn it off. But when the professor asked me if I was going to come back…I couldn’t say yes. I just gave up.”

“Like I said, you removed yourself from what was an untenable situation,” Rung said.

“Whatever,” Chromedome said, and Rung took it as an opportunity to move on from the subject.

“Would you say that your powers have impacted your life more recently?” he asked.

“Just in the same way they always have, I guess.”

“Would you like to elaborate on that?”

“You’d probably get it in one guess,” Chromedome said, but he didn’t give Rung the space to guess. “Relationships are hard. Breakups are so bad that you sometimes have to transfer to a different high school.”

“I can understand that.” It was, in fact, something that telepaths commonly brought up. “Have you tended to disclose your powers to partners?”

“I’ve tried telling and I’ve tried not telling,” Chromedome said. “Nothing’s worked. Any advice?”

“Regrettably, no,” Rung said. He was tempted, momentarily, to tell Chromedome about the TA, at least about what he wished it had been when he’d worked there – a true scientific organization, working for everyone’s benefit. He imagined that Chromedome, straightforward and inquisitive, would have fit in excellently. “That’s a challenge that comes up frequently in people with powers like yours.”

“There are other people like me?” Chromedome’s eyes widened for a second, but the expression quickly neutralized. “Of course there are, I suppose. I only know one other, and his powers are nothing like mine. He’s the one who told you about me, I suppose.”

“I don’t know that he had anything to do with it,” Rung lied. “I received the referral from a former colleague who uses data-mining techniques to discover people with outlier abilities.”

“Huh,” said Chromedome. “It would be interesting to date another telepath, I guess. But the double share of bad stuff would be rough.”

“Bad stuff?”

“Yeah. If you can hear the thoughts of everyone around you, of course you fixate on the disturbing stuff. The stuff people don’t even want to be thinking, let alone would want anybody hearing. That’s always the stuff that sticks with you from a day – keeps you up at night, sticks in your head after the innocuous stuff has gone away. That’s a real neurological phenomenon…that you probably already know about.”

“Memory retrieval and reconsolidation,” Rung replied. “That sounds like a difficult thing to handle, mentally.”

“I’ve lived with it forever,” Chromedome said. “It’s not fun, but I doubt you could do anything about it.”

Rung could have said _Actually, there are techniques to help you manage it. And further sessions could serve to help you process the things you’ve seen with a nonjudgmental third party who understands your situation._ But he didn’t.

Rung could use him. And for what Rung needed him for, he couldn’t be Rung’s patient.

_End of session notes: “Psychological evaluation turned up mild depression that I suspect to be unrelated to the patient’s outlier status. The patient’s relationship with his outlier power appears healthy and well-adjusted. He opted not to continue with further sessions to hone his power._

* * *

 

_Is this a date?_

_I would like for it to be, but I totally understand if that’s not where you’re at._

_I would also quite like for it to be a date_.

Texting had been easier.

Prowl considered himself excellent at texting. All the truest friendships he’d had in his life had existed entirely in text, where there was none of the messy interference from Prowl’s senses. Over text, Prowl only had his wits to use to distinguish whether someone was lying, whether they meant something deeper than what they said, whether they had something they wanted to talk about that Prowl should push them on.

Before he’d met Chromedome, if he’d been offered the choice between meeting a cute boy for a casual dinner or texting the same boy but never meeting him in person, he would have taken the latter without hesitation. The reality of Chromedome had forced his hand – he _was_ cute, not that that was a huge concern of Prowl’s, and he was _interesting_. Prowl enjoyed deciphering Chromedome’s idiosyncrasies and what might underlie them more than he’d enjoyed anything in ages. What he’d come up with so far was that Chromedome was lonely, having a fairly difficult time in general, which might have to do with his ability and might have more to do with school, and bizarrely, that he was genuinely interested in Prowl. He paid attention when Prowl was talking – Prowl knew that he bored most people – and he had earned the dubious title of being the only person in years to ask Prowl for advice. It had been ability-related advice that out of anyone in Chromedome’s life, only Prowl was qualified to give, but it was still something Prowl found himself treasuring.

Chromedome walked into Noodles and Company one minute late, practically skidding to a stop over his long legs from how fast he’d been walking. He didn’t have to look around; he oriented toward Prowl immediately and his face broke into a smile. He took off his sunglasses as Prowl walked over to meet him in line.

“How was your day?” Chromedome asked.

“Uninteresting,” Prowl replied. “Yours?”

 Chromedome raised his eyebrows in what looked like surprise, though Prowl didn’t know how he could have _not_ seen the question coming. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Prowl hadn’t spent all these years learning to understand social cues just for other people to _not_ understand them. It was a little bit charming, though, to know that he had the capacity to be surprising to Chromedome. “Interesting,” Chromedome said. “I’d rather not go into it right now, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” Prowl said. Chromedome was graduating in the spring, he knew, and his mannerisms right now were indicating forward-thinking. That made Prowl suspect that he may have been offered a job and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to take it. If Chromedome didn’t want to use Prowl as a sounding board, it wasn’t Prowl’s business.

Prowl remembered then that he had an update on the developing romance between two of his classmates that Chromedome had found hilarious when he’d initially mentioned it (whether he found the story or Prowl’s investment funny didn’t really matter; he enjoyed talking about it) and that topic got them through the line. By the time they were seated, they were just talking, and Prowl tried his best to keep his focus on the current moment and not let himself spiral into imagining all of the divergent branches of things that could come next.

It was getting to be dusk when they walked over to the museum, where Prowl would have an hour to do his geochemistry assignment before it closed. Chromedome had wanted to tag along after Prowl had mentioned having to go look at the gems and rocks for class, and it had spiraled into this.

Prowl completed the assignment in two minutes, and turned around to see Chromedome looking at the placard on a display of geodes. He walked up behind Chromedome to see what it was he was looking at. What was interesting to Chromedome was interesting to him. Prowl was still getting used to thinking things like that.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Chromedome asked.

Prowl knew that he could say _just like you_ if he wanted to flirt, but he decided that he wasn’t _quite_ ready for all that. Or maybe lines like that weren’t his style at all. “I suppose,” he answered truthfully. Chromedome looked at him with curiosity and he elaborated. “I’ve never spent much time thinking about whether things are…nice, or not.”

“There’s so much other information that whether or not you like it just doesn’t register?” Chromedome guessed. From anyone else making that statement, Prowl would have expected to read skepticism from their voice – they would think that his not liking things was some kind of performance of stoicism, rather than the truth. But Chromedome just sounded curious.

“Basically, yes. I won’t say that I came to be like that entirely without intent.”

“You’d rather not think about things in terms of whether you like them?”

Prowl thought about Chromedome. “I don’t know anymore.”

Chromedome gestured to the exhibit. “Look at them. They’re literal shiny things, some big, some small, some in cool shapes, all different colors. Do you want to try picking a favorite?”

Prowl did. He nodded, and the smile it elicited from Chromedome was an excellent follow-up to the excitement of the challenge.

Prowl went through the exhibits methodically. Some of the gemstones were arranged with ones like them, some were arranged with others found in the same area, some were arranged seemingly at random. It wasn’t how Prowl would have arranged the exhibit, and Prowl tried to smooth over his irritation at the lack of consistency. There were gemstones embedded into jewelry, embedded into the rock in which they’d been found, standing alone and cut into artful shapes, standing alone and smoothed, retaining the shapes that had formed naturally.

Prowl found himself drawn to a piece of bismuth, fairly large, on one of the random display racks. It reflected an array of colors that changed when Prowl moved to one side to block part of the light that was hitting it. The shape was all jagged angles, complicated and appealing to trace with his eyes. He’d spent much longer staring at it than he’d spent at any of the others before he realized that this was the answer he was looking for. Bismuth was interesting; bismuth was nice; he enjoyed looking at it.

“This one,” he said to Chromedome, pointing even though the direction of his gaze was probably clear enough.

“Good choice,” Chromedome said. “I mean, any of them would’ve been a good choice. All I meant is that I like this one too.”

Prowl could have explained why. He could have slowed down his thoughts enough to tell Chromedome just what it was about the bismuth that drew Prowl to it, but before he could order his thoughts, his attention was _entirely_ diverted by Chromedome’s hand sliding into his.

Prowl…Prowl liked this too.

They stayed like that, admiring the piece of bismuth, for a few moments. Then Chromedome tugged slightly on Prowl’s hand. “Ready to get out of here?”

“Yes.”

It was fully dark on the street by the time they exited the museum, everything looking slightly different under the glow of streetlights and restaurant signs and stars. Chromedome led Prowl down the street with their hands still together between them, chatting.

“Wanna sit?” Chromedome was looking out at the park across the street from the university buildings, which they were currently passing by.

“Alright,” Prowl said, and Chromedome led him to a bench, letting his hand slip out of Prowl’s as they settled. Observations tumbled through Prowl’s head. It was warmer than average for the season, comfortable enough to sit outside for a few minutes. The sky was clear, with the usual faint stars that could be seen above the city. The shops bracketing the park area were closed for the season, and there were a few other people scattered around the benches, talking quietly in twos or threes.

He observed Chromedome, who’d stopped talking and was now just looking at Prowl, with curiosity rather than expectation. Waiting to find out what it was that Prowl would say or do next. His long limbs were relaxed, elbows resting on the back of the bench behind him. Open.

“I really like spending time with you,” Prowl said on an impulse.

The corners of Chromedome’s mouth perked up. He moved his arms to rest on his thighs, leaning in towards Prowl. “I like spending time with you too. When we met, I knew it would feel like a relief, and it does. But it turns out that beyond that, I really like you.”

Prowl had never kissed anyone. But he’d observed enough people to know that that was the sort of thing someone said, and that Chromedome’s was the sort of posture people took, when they wanted to be kissed.

Prowl definitely wanted to kiss Chromedome.

He leaned in.

For a flash of a second, he wished that he could experience this like a normal person. Every part of the moment crowded his awareness with equal importance. The conversation that some other students were having about basketball halfway down the block. The shifts in the wind against his shirt. The smells of car exhaust from the street next to them and animal droppings from the grass of the park. Every detail of Chromedome’s position, each of his actions and their dozen possible meanings. The surprising softness of Chromedome’s lips on his.

Then Chromedome pulled back, smiling, and Prowl remembered that he would never have gotten here if he were a normal person. With that thought, all those extraneous details fell away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Drift!


	7. Drift, Session 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only chapter-specific content warning is a fairly mild section relevant to the torture tag, detailed in the end notes

Rodimus jerked around at the sound of a crash, causing some pasta water to slosh over the side of the pot and turn to steam upon contact with the stove. Drift was standing in the center of Rodimus’s tiny kitchen, both the thrifted bowls he’d been holding now in shards on the ground.

“Drift?” Drift didn’t respond and Rodimus’s concern grew. Rodimus circled around him, mindful of the broken shards, and put a grounding hand on Drift’s arm.

Drift seemed to come back to life at that, but not in a good way. He stumbled backwards, crashing into the counter hard enough to rattle its contents. He looked at Rodimus for a second, but seemed like he was seeing right through him. He lowered his head to rake his hands through his hair, eyes wide with something Rodimus couldn’t comprehend.

Rodimus stepped closer, brushing his fingers against Drift’s elbow. This time, Drift’s jerking away _hurt_ , because it was clearly a reaction to Rodimus rather than some kind of automatic flight reflex. “Don’t, please,” Drift said, turning around to rest his elbows on the counter and put his head in his hands.

Rodimus felt his heart pounding at the rejection. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to keep any tremor out of his voice. He switched the stove off with trembling hands and grabbed a trash bag to start to clean up the broken pieces of ceramic.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Drift said after a minute. Once he had Rodimus’s attention from that, he levered himself up with what looked to take more effort than it should and knelt to join him on the floor, one hand clasping around the hand of Rodimus’s that wasn’t currently holding something sharp. “I don’t like to be touched, in moments like that. It doesn’t help, it’s just overstimulating. I know it’s not the same for you, and I really like that I can do something to help, when you’re having a bad time. My brain just doesn’t work the same way.”

All of that made Rodimus feel a little better. Drift’s warm palm on the back of his hand made him feel a lot better. “I’m sorry I assumed,” he said. “Really. I won’t do it again.”

Drift leaned in for a quick kiss, then released Rodimus so that he could help collect the ceramic shards. “Sorry about the bowls.”

“I think we need to set a limit of the number of sorrys allowed in a conversation between us,” Rodimus said. “It’s fine. I bought them for fifty cents apiece at Goodwill. I didn’t need four bowls anyway.”

Drift smiled at the statement, but the expression faded before reaching his eyes. “I’ll get the broom for the rest of it,” he said, turning away.

Rodimus took the opportunity to dump the pasta into the strainer.

When Drift came back, Rodimus couldn’t resist asking, “What did you see?” Really, what he wanted to know was whether all of Drift’s visions were this distressing, or if this was an especially bad one. He just wanted to know what to be prepared for.

“Please don’t ever ask me that,” Drift said as he swept the last of the broken ceramic into the dustpan. “It won’t make anything better.”

“Okay,” said Rodimus as promptly as he could. “I’ve lived this long without seeing the future. I’ll manage.”

Rodimus felt Drift step so that he was right behind him. He let Drift use gentle touches on his forearms to turn him around against the sink and relaxed into Drift’s firmer hold as Drift pulled him in for a deep kiss. “Thank you,” Drift said, resting their foreheads together for a moment before he pulled away.

Rodimus turned back to minding the pasta to hide the worst of his dumb grin. “Can you grab the other bowls?”

Drift seemed okay as they ate. Quiet, but that wasn’t totally abnormal. Drift could talk for ages if he got on the right subject, but Rodimus was used to filling the majority of the time they were together with words. Drift listened and ribbed and laughed, and by the time they were done eating Rodimus was pretty confident that he was really okay, and not hiding an episode like he’d had when he’d first taken Rodimus driving.

They cleaned up and settled on the couch, Drift taking the remote and faux-casually flipping the channel to American Ninja Warrior. Rodimus rested his head on Drift’s shoulder and took Drift’s hand in his.

“What does help?” he asked when Ninja Warrior went to a commercial break. “What would be the best thing for me to do, if something like that happens again?”

“When it happens again,” Drift corrected, then he sighed. “Honestly? Leaving me alone for a minute is what I really need. I have trouble separating what’s real and what isn’t, right after, and people touching me doesn’t help. I just need things to be as simple as possible while I reorient myself to the real world.”

“Okay, so no touching, no talking, turn off music if I have it on?”

Drift leaned his head against Rodimus’s and squeezed his hand a little tighter. “Yeah, that would be really good.”

“No problem,” Rodimus said. He tried to take a deep breath but felt his chest resist it. If there was ever a time to reveal all that he’d been hiding to Drift, this was it. If Drift trusted him enough to believe that Rodimus would give him what he needed, Rodimus couldn’t think of a way to repay him except to trust him back. He turned down the TV and curled further into Drift’s side. Drift snaked an arm around him and Rodimus melted into the touch.

“I haven’t told you what my power is yet,” he said. He felt Drift’s nod, but Drift didn’t say anything. “It’s not an issue anymore, but that’s not why I haven’t told you. I haven’t told you because it makes people scared of me.” Rodimus took one shaky inhale and said it. “I start fires. It’s not the kind of power you’d want somebody like me to have. It’s triggered by strong emotions – or it was. It might be gone for good now.”

“You _know_ I’d never have said that that’s not the kind of power I’d want you to have, but – gone for good, Rodimus, what?”

“The TA.” Rodimus curled up tighter, and Drift compensated by holding him more securely. For once, it barely helped. “You heard of them?”

“Rung’s mentioned them,” Drift said. “I thought they were a nonprofit research firm.”

Rodimus just shook his head no against Drift’s chest and Drift started moving his hand, making comforting strokes down Rodimus’s back. “They’re…maybe that’s true, but they’re a lot more than that also. I went there for treatment, after I caused the restaurant I was working in to nearly burn down. No one was hurt – not that time, but I couldn’t risk – hurting someone. Again. I – they were awful to me, and I don’t know if I would have made the same choice today.”

“Rodimus, I’m so sorry,” Drift said.

“Do you want to know what happened?” Rodimus asked.

“I would appreciate hearing it if you’re willing to tell me, but I understand if you’re not.”

“Of course I want to tell you,” he said. “They taught me how to feel emotions without setting fires. Feel everything, as extreme as they could make it. I learned not to set fires.” He took a deep breath, chest still tight as if he’d been wearing a crappy binder for too long. “Then they kept me around to study me for another month or so.” Rung had used the word _abuse_ but Rodimus tripped over it, not quite ready to admit just what it was he’d been dumb enough to submit himself to. “I got out of there the week before we met.”

“Good fucking god,” Drift said. For the whole explanation, Drift’s hand hadn’t stopped making steadying circles on Rodimus’s back. “I’m glad you made it out.”

“It wasn’t an achievement. They let me go,” Rodimus said. He neglected to mention the number of times he’d tried to use his powers to free himself and failed. Some details he could keep quiet about, see?

“Still.” Drift’s voice was quiet. “They can rot, and I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thanks.” It seemed like the right response.

“So you can’t set fires anymore, even if you try?” Drift asked.

“I could never do it on purpose,” Rodimus explained. “It just happened. Now it just…doesn’t happen anymore.”

Drift nodded. “Either way,” he said. “I still trust you, and I still feel safe with you, and I love you.”

“Love you too,” Rodimus said, and he reached for the remote to turn the volume back up on Ninja Warrior.

 

* * *

 

_Session notes: Drift has talked through some past traumas in our sessions, but I haven’t yet been able to bring the subject around to how his ability and his mechanisms of coping with it affect his life currently. I hope to use this session to get a feel for what is important to him at this juncture, and in what areas he might benefit from a healthier perspective on his ability._

 

“Good afternoon, Drift,” Rung said as he shut the door behind the two of them.

Drift wasn’t looking at Rung. He was looking out the window, like he was trying to memorize something about the dreary December day. “Good afternoon,” he said, sounding distracted.

“Something on your mind?” Rung asked gently. Not gently enough. Drift’s attention jerked to him, his eyes wide as they met Rung’s.

“I don’t think this is working,” Drift said, threading his hands together to stop them visibly shaking.

Rung frowned and tried to cover it with a nod. Drift had seemed to be making slow but steady progress in their sessions, and Rung would know what to say if the problem was that it didn’t feel like enough. “Can you elaborate on what you mean by ‘this’?”

“Therapy. We talk and talk, but then I leave and nothing has changed. I still get visions. I still have to decide what to do about them.”

“Drift, did something happen?”

Drift laughed, the sound shaky. “Not yet.”

“Do you think it would help to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay,” said Rung. “There are a couple of other strategies that I know of that we could try –”

“I want to try the TA.”

Rung froze in shock, and panicked for a second, thinking that Getaway might be in range, before he forced himself to exhale. “That’s not one of the strategies.”

“But it’s an option, isn’t it?”

“How do you know about the TA?” Rung asked, knowing full well that the answer had to be Rodimus. And if Rodimus had told him, what did Drift possibly think he could accomplish there other than self-harm?

Drift tightened his hands into fists, then effortfully uncurled them, adopting his usual painful approximation of open body language. “Does it matter?” he asked.

 _Yes, but now I have my answer and I can drop it_. “I suppose not,” said Rung. “I am, however, curious about what you hope to achieve by going there.”

“I want it gone,” Drift said. “I don’t want this power. I don’t want to have to live the rest of my life terrified of the future.”

“On some level, Drift, all of us live our lives terrified of the future.”

“And I’d love to know what that’s like.”

“Drift…as I believe you understand, the TA is extremely dangerous. Beyond that, there’s a chance that they simply can’t give you what you want.” _And a chance that they can but won’t, too eager to have a willing research subject for as long as you’ll let them_. “Dampening outlier powers can be done with medication, but taking them away entirely is a matter of brain surgery. The kind of people who are willing and trained to do that sort of thing tend not to be the sort of people you want messing around in your head.”

“Better that than this.”

“Drift, I can’t condone this. It may not feel like it, but you have made progress since you started seeing me. You’re more open to talking about things and willing to examine your feelings. If we kept going –”

“Yeah, things are a little bit better,” Drift said, looking down at his hands and back up. “You’re a good therapist, Rung. And a good person. I’m grateful for the time and attention you’ve given me.”

 _Then respect my opinion._ “I care about you, Drift. That’s why I have to advise you not to do this.”

“Will you give me the referral?”

“Drift, I understand that it isn’t my job to tell you how to live your life. But I feel that I would be neglecting the duty of care I have towards you if I allow you to do this.”

“Will you give me the referral?”

“If you truly insist, yes.”

“Give me the referral.”

 

_End of session notes: See attached._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: in this chapter, Rodimus describes his time at the TA in about as much detail as I use in the end notes of Chapter 4
> 
> Next: Prowl. 
> 
> chapter updates will probably be faster from now til the end!


	8. Prowl, Session 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last normally-structured chapter before we head into the endgame...

Prowl could sense Chromedome from all the way down the hall – his long strides slow from being used to walking alongside shorter people. Prowl got up to open the door of the study room that they’d frequented most weekends since they’d first met up.

“Happy finals week,” Chromedome said, handing Prowl an extra-large coffee with his own cradled in his other hand. He didn’t look surprised that Prowl had anticipated his arrival.

“If you insist,” Prowl said. He took an experimental sip and set the coffee down next to his scattered notes as he sat back in his seat. “When are your exams?”

“Monday and Tuesday,” Chromedome said.

“Are you leaving town right after?” There was a movie out that Prowl thought Chromedome might enjoy, but he wouldn’t be able to relax enough to watch it until after his own last exam on Thursday.

“Um, no,” Chromedome said, giving off every nonverbal cue of reticence that Prowl had ever memorized.

Prowl focused on Chromedome. “Why not?” He hated the concept of secrets – if Chromedome had one, he would know, and he didn’t know how he’d live without trying to puzzle it out.

“There’s just something I have to take care of.”

That wasn’t enough to satisfy Prowl, to ease his curiosity even enough to go back to his notes. “Something for work?”

“No.” Chromedome understood that Prowl would be able to tell if he lied – that was probably the only reason that he didn’t. “Can you just drop it?”

“Have you met me?”

That startled a laugh out of Chromedome, and Prowl tried his best to put a lid on his burning curiosity, covered it with a gentle smile. “It’s something that it’s very important for me to stay quiet about. Not for myself but for others.”

“I have plenty of practice keeping secrets.”

“But will you keep it secret if you’re worried about me?”

Prowl’s mind went wild coming up with possibilities for what might make Chromedome say something like that. But…Prowl didn’t want to lie either. Not to Chromedome. “Probably not.”

“It’s really not that risky.”

“You have no idea what I’m coming up with right now.”

“Well add _it’s really not that risky_ to the parameters then, and try to calm down.”

_Not that risky_. Factoring in Chromedome’s blasé attitude regarding his own safety, all of the same possibilities were still on the table. Participating in a research study. Shadowing a doctor in a hospital department that would be difficult on his power. Some family issue that he wanted to keep private for pride’s sake.

Prowl came up with one more possibility and all the rest fell apart as the logic of it slid into place. Prowl felt his hands starting to go numb as he became surer and surer.

“You’re working with Rung.”

“Prowl, _how –_ ”

Prowl glared. He hadn’t needed Chromedome to confirm it. It was right there, in Chromedome’s reluctance to answer Prowl’s questions, in the internal list Prowl was keeping of hints about Rung’s secret: the model ships in his office that he snuck a glance to every time the topic of friendship or loss came up, the shadowy organization he’d used to work for that had almost no information about it on the internet, the way he’d asked Prowl questions during that first session like he’d had an ulterior motive.

The fact that Prowl had mentioned Chromedome to Rung, and Rung had made a show of not writing anything down.

“You know Rung?”

“He’s my therapist.”

Chromedome’s eyebrows raised a little bit, and yes, Prowl had made a point of not discussing _that_. “Oh.”

“What have you gotten yourself into, Chromedome?” Other than the fact that Rung was hiding something and planning something and afraid of something, Prowl really hadn’t been able to discern many details. He hoped that the phrasing would trick Chromedome into giving Prowl information that he assumed Prowl had.

“Like I said,” Chromedome said. “I can’t tell you.”

“But he’s putting you in danger,” Prowl argued with complete sincerity _and_ as a manipulation tactic.

“And I’m an adult and I’m willing to accept that.”

“He’s taking advantage –”

“What would it take for you to drop this?” Chromedome asked, angry, angrier than Prowl had ever seen him.

Prowl just started, knowing that Chromedome wouldn’t want to hear his answer. _For it not to be happening._

“I need to study,” Chromedome said, closing his laptop and starting to shove things into his bag. “If you want to be reasonable about this, send me a text. I’ll be in the library.”

Prowl could do nothing but watch him walk away.

 

* * *

 

 

_Session notes: Prowl has recently spent his sessions discussing current sources of anxiety in his life with me, and I’ve been working to come up with coping strategies that are suited to him. His ability remains a significant challenge in grounding strategies in particular – Prowl either cannot focus his attention, or he refuses to in keeping with his generalized anxiety. Prowl has previously told me that changes in routine are a struggle for him, so I am planning to focus this session on discussing potential strategies that he can employ to cope with his upcoming break from school._

Rung put down his pen and stared out the window, ordering himself to get it together – as though that ever worked. He’d filed Drift’s request with the TA yesterday and didn’t expect to be contacted any further about it. It was outside his control, and he didn’t regret conceding to Drift’s choice. Still, though, something about it felt like it was rotting him from the inside, and Prowl was going to notice that he was shaken. Between that and his continued phone calls and meetings with Chromedome, a session with Prowl today sounded like a precarious proposition. If he’d realized twenty-four hours ago that he would be this bad off, he would have cancelled it.

Rung closed his eyes, took a few grounding breaths, then stood and opened the door.

Prowl was standing in the waiting room, as if he’d been pacing. That was abnormal, and concerning. “Hello, Prowl,” Rung said. “Come on in.”

Throwing a quick glance to Pipes who was typing something up at his desk, Prowl did.

Rung took his usual seat, finding himself calmer now that he could see that something significant was bothering Prowl. This was his area of expertise, something that he had years upon years of experience dealing with.

Prowl sat down on the couch, palms pressed flat against his knees. “What are you planning?” he asked before Rung could get a word in.

In an instant, Rung’s equilibrium evaporated. “Excuse me?”

“That place you used to work. There’s almost no information about it on the internet _or_ with city building accreditation, you managed to start a solo private practice right after leaving there with no other professional contacts on this side of the country, and you’re planning something,” Prowl said. He didn’t sound triumphant, like Rung would have expected him to if he’d been working on this as a side project for his own edification or entertainment. No, his voice was barbed. He wanted something from this.

Well, maybe Rung could still convince him otherwise. They’d made so much progress, and Prowl might not understand that what he was demanding would be the end of it. “Prowl, I can’t tell you anything about that,” Rung said. “As your therapist, there are things that I cannot tell you in the interest of professionalism. And as my patient, you do not have a right to demand information about my personal life.”

“As a person, I have the right to demand whatever I want,” Prowl said. “You have the right to refuse to tell me, of course. But as a person, you should understand that I have very good reason to want to know what you’ve gotten my boyfriend mixed up in.”

Rung froze. Of course Prowl finding out had always been a possibility, but this…Rung and Chromedome were almost confident on the method they’d come up with to free Skids from the prison his mind was trapped in. All that was left was figuring out a way to break into the facility – a prospect for which, Rung had long ago realized, Prowl’s mind could be very helpful.

“Alright, then,” Rung said. “As your therapist, I refuse to use session time to discuss any of this.” Prowl opened his mouth to protest. “ _But_ in the case that you would like to no longer continue as my patient, I can tell you anything you want to know.”

“That’s what I want,” Prowl said.

“I’d prefer it if you took more time to decide,” Rung said. His heart was beating so rapidly he could feel it in his throat. With Prowl on board, maybe – maybe they could actually do this. Rung would never have gotten Prowl involved in this if he hadn’t asked it, demanded it himself. But he couldn’t deny that Prowl’s involvement was Skids’ best chance. “If that’s truly what you want, file the appropriate paperwork with Pipes at the end of this session. After that, you may contact me at the cell number listed on my business card.”

“I don’t think you entirely understand,” Prowl said. “I want to know what you’re doing because – well, you know what I’m like, but I only _care_ because you have Chromedome wrapped up in it. I bet I could figure out how you found him in the first place.”

Rung tried to control is body language, but Prowl’s narrowed eyes told him that he failed. Telling Chromedome that the TA had found him independently of his association with Prowl had seemed to work, but Rung had always known that the same lie wouldn’t work on Prowl.

“I don’t want to know, and I certainly don’t want to _help_ , if that’s what you’re looking for. I want you to keep him out of this.”

“That’s not your choice to make.”

“Isn’t it? You don’t know him like I do – you can’t. Telling him that he’s special, that he’s worth your attention, that he can do something good, something helpful – for him, that’s manipulation. It’s so easy to get him to do something dangerous, something stupid and self-sacrificing – you can’t understand.”

“I understand that you’re worried about him,” Rung said. “But I value his safety too, and I’ve never been anything but honest –”

“You don’t get it.” Prowl’s eyes weren’t bouncing all of over the room like they usually did – today, they bored consistently into Rung’s. “I found one good thing, right? Well, he found me, but I’m part of it. I _did that_. The only thing in my life that feels…good, the only thing that makes me feel like I can stay not-normal and still have normal things – you are taking that away from me. I want you to _stop it_.”

Rung let the words sit for a moment, blinking but refusing to break eye contact with Prowl entirely. “I can’t do that,” he finally responded, fighting the urge to argue. If that was how Prowl perceived the situation, Rung was going to have to meet him where he was. “I hope that, if you choose to seek out more information, it will change your mind.”

“Why would you care?” Prowl asked, quietly, as though he was actually asking himself. “If I can’t be your patient anymore when I find out, what does it matter what I think of the whole thing?”

Rung just waited, resigned to the inevitable. It didn’t matter what he might say. Prowl had already figured it out.

“You need me too.” It wasn’t a question.

Rung was careful to keep the lie he would have told anyone else, _no_ , out of his answer. “I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“Luckily for you, I want to make sure Chromedome stays safe,” Prowl said. He stood up, and Rung didn’t try to stop him. “Expect my call.”

 

_End of session notes: Prowl let me know that he has been finding our sessions counterproductive and let me know of his intention to seek a new therapist. I will provide a more detailed note with his exit report._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plan is to have a new chapter up every day until the whole thing is posted! comments still very much appreciated :D


	9. Rodimus, Session 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter in the end notes because spoilers

_Session notes: Rodimus has been willing to talk through some past traumas with me, but for this session I suspect we’ll be focusing on the present. I recently became aware of a change in Rodimus’s circumstances that I expect we’ll spend the majority of the session addressing._

Rodimus was sitting in one of the lobby chairs, bouncing his leg, when Rung opened the door. “Rodimus, come on in,” he said. It had been four days since Drift had asked Rung to file a referral to the TA, and knowing the TA, Rung suspected that they would have acted on it by now. He had no idea what if anything Drift had told Rodimus about the situation. 

Rodimus stood and made his way over to the office, letting Rung shut the door behind him. “How are you doing this afternoon?” he asked, making his way to his chair.

“It’s been a week,” Rodimus replied, voice flat like he was omitting the word _long_ from the statement. “I know you can’t talk to me about Drift but –” he let out a shaky laugh “– he’s all I can think about.”

“I can’t talk about my sessions with Drift, but we can talk about your reactions to his decisions.” Rung would just have to be careful. “What is it you’ve been thinking about, exactly?”

“I’m scared for him. I’m really, really scared. I don’t know what I did wrong, what could have possibly made him do this.”

 _Ah_. That, Rung could address safely – though Rodimus probably wouldn’t want to hear what he had to say. “What makes you think that anything you did influenced his decision?”

“I told him what happened. I’m the only reason he knew anything more about the TA other than that they existed. He wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t for me.”

“What do you think he was trying to accomplish?”

“I think I pushed him away.” Rodimus had rounded on himself, looking at his fingers as he fidgeted with them. “I’ve told you before, I’ve felt like a shell of a person since I came out of there. I think that he got sick of dealing with me.”

“That would have been a very big decision for him to make on that kind of basis,” Rung said, then tried to steer himself away from speculating on a situation hypothetically when he did, in fact, know exactly what had happened. “Did Drift do anything else that made you feel like he was sick of dealing with you?”

Rodimus thought about that for a while. “No,” he admitted.

“I think you should consider the possibility that you weren’t as significant a factor in Drift’s decision as you thought,” Rung said. “It’s a very common fallacy to assume that the things that people around you do, they do because of you, but it’s often not the case. It may be worth considering that hurting you was a side effect of Drift’s decision, rather than the impetus for it.”

“I know, I need to have a less me-centric view of the world.” Rodimus sounded like he was quoting someone.

“I think you can phrase that in a way that’s a little kinder to yourself,” Rung said.

The door to the office burst open then and Rung leapt from his seat. That was not supposed to happen, and he had to demonstrate to Rodimus that this was _not_ normal and would _not_ happen again. Even if it was an emergency, Pipes should have called his cell phone.

Rung opened his mouth to yell and found himself stopped before he could make a sound. The door opened the rest of the way to reveal Getaway.

“Where’s Skids?” Getaway asked.

Rung felt the answer forming at the front of his mind.

“Who’s Skids?” Rodimus asked, giving Rung just enough time to imagine the familiar construct of a house and filter out information that he didn’t want inside of it.

“You, shut up,” said Getaway. Rung wondered if Pipes was okay – wondered what Getaway might be here for. Rung didn’t know any information that would be of interest to him. “Where’s Skids?”

“I don’t know where Skids is.”

Rung reached over to the container on his desk that mostly held writing utensils and took out a pair of scissors, muscles shaking from his attempt to resist it. Slowly, not of his volition, he opened the scissors and placed the blades on either side of his index finger, not cutting into it. Yet.

“What’s going on? What are you doing to him?”

“I _said_ shut up.”

Rung felt Getaway’s influence wane for long enough to drop the scissors on the floor and kick them away. Rodimus made an expression like he was trying to speak and looked livid as he struggled against Getaway.

Rung took advantage of the fact that Getaway could only control one person at a time to say “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Getaway turned back on Rung so fast that he felt the rush of Getaway’s influence in his head like a tidal wave. “Oh, he’s one of yours, that’s right. What can he do?”

Rung knew the answer to that question. He could tell Getaway. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He _wouldn’t_. “Argh.”

Rodimus had narrowed his eyes on Getaway and he was raising his hands, and there was something happening to one of them that made Rung blink, sure he was imagining things. Determination like Rung had never seen in him defined every line of his demeanor.

“I wouldn’t ask questions like that if I were you,” Rung said. It was the truth, even if it wasn’t exactly the truth Getaway wanted to hear. A pounding started in Rung’s head and he gasped.

“Hey, asshole,” Rodimus said. “I don’t like being told to shut up, but I only do this when you threaten the people important to me.”

Getaway barely had a chance to turn toward him before Rodimus was shooting flames at him from both fists. Getaway stumbled back, and Rung ducked out of the way. Getaway flung a hand out towards Rodimus and Rodimus went still, expression angry and vibrating under Getaway’s control. Rung took advantage of the respite, as Getaway controlled Rodimus and batted the flames off the front of his leather jacket, to push the emergency alert button on the underside of his desk.

With the button pushed, and Getaway temporarily subdued, Rung screwed up. He let his guard slip. He let himself feel relieved as he waited for the security officers for the floor to burst in and restrain Getaway.

“Where’s Skids?”

 _The house was gone_. There was too much happening, too much change in too little time, to maintain it. “Skids is in the TA building.”

“Where’s that?”

“84 Clifton, in the South Hills.”

“Thank you,” Getaway said. He breezed back out the door, and Rung heard him saying “Everything’s fine. Turn around.” To someone in the hallway before the outer door to Rung’s practice slammed shut.

The office was still and quiet, now, smelling of burned leather and smoke. Rung had to come up with an explanation of that for Rodimus, he had to go check on Pipes, he had to…had to find out how Getaway had gotten in, after the protocols he’d put in place to keep him out of his office.

But did any of it matter anymore? He’d as good as failed Skids.

“What was that?” Rodimus asked, just on the edge of a demand, harsh enough to summon Rung to look up. Of course it still mattered. Some things did, at least.

Now he had to do this again. It had been a full day, and he was still waiting on Prowl’s call. But what was the point of telling Rodimus everything if Getaway was going to reach Skids first?

Well…Getaway, even, would wait until dark. He wouldn’t risk walking into the TA during the workday without a plan. If Rung came up with _something_ before tonight…maybe, maybe they could still win.

“That was my past coming here in an attempt to break me,” Rung said. “I can tell you more, but I won’t take session time to do it, and I can’t tell you anything so long as I’m your therapist and you’re my patient.”

His phone rang.

“I wouldn’t normally do this, but I apologize. I need to take this,” he said. He flipped the phone open and was greeted with Prowl’s voice on the other end.

 

 _End of session notes:_ [file empty]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: threats of bodily harm, self-harm imagery (not in a self-harm context), mind control, use of fire as a weapon
> 
> New chapters daily til the whole fic is posted!


	10. Skids I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter in the end notes

Skids surveyed the wall in front of him, fingers twitching as he analyzed the route. He could see it, lunge from that hold to the triangular one, lever himself up with his foot on the last handhold…

“Looking for a buddy?” a voice asked from next to him. Skids took his eyes off the route to make sure he was the one being spoken to.

“Yeah, actually,” Skids said. He had folks he climbed with sometimes, but tonight he hadn’t invited any of them – he’d been feeling too restless to want to try and make conversation, and he’d figured he’d spend the evening bouldering. Then he’d spotted this route.

“I can belay you first, you looked like you were itching to get at it,” the person next to him said. He was half a head shorter than Skids, attractive, and dressed in an outfit that would have made Skids feel ridiculous but somehow worked. He reached for the rope. “I’m Getaway.”

“Skids.” Skids hooked the rope into his harness and stepped up to the wall. They traded the traditional phrases and Skids started to climb. Right heel hook, lunge to the left, pull – he got halfway up the wall as he’d expected, then found himself not tall enough to grab onto the handhold he’d hoped to. He slipped off the wall and hung in the air, waving for Getaway to let him down.

He landed easily on his feet and Getaway gave him more slack to unhook. “Great technique,” Getaway commented as he unhooked his own harness.

Skids couldn’t help but roll his eyes, going over the missed handhold in his head. “Not that great.”

“It’s a 5.11, give yourself a little credit,” Getaway said. Skids offered him his end of the rope and they traded places. “You new around here?”

“Nah, I just don’t tend to come on Fridays. I’m here a lot on weekends.”

“I can’t do weekends,” Getaway said. “Too crowded. If I come here to climb, I want to climb, not sit around for half an hour shooting the shit.” He reached into his chalk bag and rechalked his hands as he stepped up to the wall.

Skids tightened the line and Getaway started climbing.

He was _fast_. Skids had to pull on the rope consistently to keep up with him, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, and he didn’t ever wait for Skids to pull in the slack. Skids was mesmerized by his climbing as he made his way up the route, from the ground looking like he was exerting the same amount of effort as an average person walking down the street.

He tapped the top element and let go, somehow looking graceful hanging in the air as he let Skids lower him to the ground. “I see that I could stand to learn a thing or two from you,” Skids said, unhooking his harness. Getaway’s beta required a level of flexibility that Skids didn’t have, but the way he balanced, tucking himself toward the wall even with his feet on different levels, seemed like something that could get Skids through the passage that had tripped him up.

“Again?” Getaway asked, unhooking his harness.

Skids shook his head. “I need a minute to recover.”

Getaway looked disappointed for a moment, and then Skids felt something cold in his mind. “What are you doing?”

Getaway’s eyes widened in surprise then narrowed.

Skids felt the tug increase. It wanted him to go back onto the wall. Skids stayed where he was.

“You’re like me?” Getaway asked, voice hushed and amazed.

“It’s complicated,” Skids said.

Getaway’s face broke into a shining smile, which made Skids feel a little bit proud even with the tension of the situation. Then it disappeared. “But…why is this just happening now? Usually it’s immediate.”

“I think it’s because you didn’t want me to do anything that I didn’t want to do,” Skids said.

He could almost see Getaway’s thought processes shift and then the pull on his mind eased, leaving Skids feeling weirdly off-balance. “What do you mean by complicated?” Getaway asked. The pull on Skids’ mind was back, now wanting him to answer Getaway’s question, but he ignored it. Getaway probably couldn’t help it.

It eased up when he admitted to himself that no matter how resistant he was to people knowing about his power, Getaway by virtue of having it used on him probably deserved to know.

“You know the word Outlier?” Skids asked. Getaway nodded. “I can take on the abilities of Outliers around me, whatever they may be. Telepathy, control over elements, whatever it is.”

“What’s your range?” Getaway’s curiosity was clear from his body language, but the pull had disappeared. Skids wanted to tell him.

“About thirty feet,” he said. “You?”

“Fiftyish,” he said.

“What exactly is it that you do?” Skids asked, having a suspicion of the answer but wanting to be sure.

“I can impose my will on people,” said Getaway, voice flat and straightforward. His eyes were narrowed and bored into Skids, as if he was waiting for a reaction.

Skids felt an instinctive guardedness at that but did his best to bury it. “Interesting. I don’t think I’ve met someone who could do that before.”

Getaway smirked. “Me neither.”

“I do want to try the wall again,” Skids said, not wanting to pass up the opportunity now that his hands had had a little bit of time to recover. “Then we should go grab a drink or something.”

Weirdly enough, Getaway recoiled, shoulders hunching in as he picked up the belay end of the rope. “So that’s what it feels like.”

Skids felt his eyes go wide. “Oh, god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to –”

“Do the route,” Getaway said, sounding like he’d recovered. “It’s not that I don’t want to belay you, you just took me by surprise. Guess I’m gonna have to get used to it.” He gave Skids a thin smile, still seeming a little shaken.

“You sure?” Skids asked, aware that he didn’t want anything but an honest answer. He would walk out of here and never come back if Getaway was uncomfortable being around him.

“I’m sure. Get up there,” said Getaway.

Skids stepped up to the rope, sneaking glances at Getaway as he hooked it to his harness. Getaway seemed okay now, hooked in and waiting on Skids.

They traded phrases and Skids started up, thinking about Getaway’s beta. He lunged for the hold he’d missed before in one confident motion and caught it, having to reposition his legs to stay on the wall. Getaway held him secure until he reached the top.

When he hit the ground, he sensed nothing at all from Getaway. Maybe that meant that they were on the same wavelength. “You want another go, or you want to head out?” Skids asked as he unhooked.

“I’d like to head out,” Getaway said, unhooking fast to show he meant it. That was what Skids wanted too.

They took their gear off and made their way out to the parking lot, not talking much. “You drive here?” Skids asked. Getaway shook his head. “Want to hang out downtown? My place is only a few blocks from Main.”

“Sounds good to me,” Getaway said. Skids tried to genuinely tamp down on his curiosity. Yes, he was curious where Getaway lived, where he came from, what he did for a living. But not so curious that he was willing to push his will on Getaway to find out. More than he wanted to know, he wanted to find out naturally, the way people typically communicated with each other. This was Getaway, who had come to the gym alone. Getaway who, before tonight, might not have had a conversation he hadn’t subconsciously directed in a frighteningly long time.

“How did you meet so many other Outliers?” Getaway asked as Skids drove. “I assume you didn’t run into all of them at the gym.”

“There’s this…open secret of an organization called the TA,” Skids said. “They study Outliers. I do some consultation for them.”

Getaway looked at him sidelong. “So they study you?”

“I meant what I said. They’ve got scans of my brain, but I didn’t want them studying me long-term. Got better things to do, you know? I have a few friends who are deeper into the science side of things.” His frequent lunches with Rung or Nautica were enough to hear all of that side of the organization Skids wanted to know.

“You won’t tell them about me, right?” Getaway asked, and Skids felt a rush in his mind so distracting that he considered pulling the car over.

“Don’t do that while I’m driving,” he said. “Of course I won’t tell them.”

“But you want to. If you feel it, that means you want to, right?”

“I trust them, and I believe in what they’re trying to do, but I’m willing to respect your wishes,” Skids said. “Good enough?”

The pull eased, so Skids assumed it was good enough.

This was going to be trickier than he’d expected.

 

* * *

 

“Rung has a new theory about me,” Nautica said as she and Skids sat down at their usual table in the TA’s cafeteria.

“Oh?” Skids cracked open his soda and settled back to listen.

Nautica talked about the limbic system activation that Rung and that asshole Froid had noticed on her last MEG when they’d finally let her “play with water” while having a scan. Skids nodded along, quietly absorbing the information as he ate.

“I wish there was more information about us out there,” she said when the story wound down. “Not even Rung will tell me if this is brand-new or not. If we could just publish this stuff in normal academic journals, we’d all be so famous. I could just do a postdoc _here_ and not worry about the rest of my career.”

“…and humanity in general would benefit from increased access to knowledge,” Skids teased.

Nautica rolled her eyes. “Humanity, schumanity. It’s looking more and more like I’m going to have to leave the city after I graduate if I ever want an academic career, and Lotty still doesn’t want to go anywhere.”

Skids nodded sympathetically – Nautica was coming up on graduating with her PhD in bioengineering at the local university, and Skids had heard all about the ongoing difficulties between her and her girlfriend because of it.

“Anyway, enough about me,” Nautica said. “Anything new in your world?”

Skids paused for too long trying to figure out whether to tell her. Nautica caught onto something in his expression and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

He might as well. “I met this guy.”

Nautica’s jaw dropped. “And you let me lead with all my boring brain stuff? Tell me everything.”

Skids hesitated, then he did. Telling Nautica definitely didn’t count as “telling the TA” – she was only being paid as a research subject. Rung was a different story altogether, and Skids didn’t have any other friends who knew about the Outlier thing, so it was tell Nautica or keep it to himself. “He was the most interesting person I’ve met in ages,” Skids commented after he finished telling Nautica about how he and Getaway had met. “I’m seeing him again tonight.”

Nautica’s grin had slipped over the course of the story, and now her lips were pursed like she was trying to hide a frown. “Be careful, okay?” she said. “He sounds dangerous.”

“I can handle it,” Skids said.

“That’s beside the point.”

Skids smiled at his friend. “I’ll be careful.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rung startled awake, at first unable to place what had woken him. Then his phone rang again.

He grabbed it clumsily from the nightstand and took the call, unable to see who was calling him without his glasses on. “Hello?”

“Rung? It’s Skids.”

Something in Skids’ voice had Rung straightening his back and blinking aggressively until his eyes focused enough to spot his glasses in their usual place on the nightstand. He grabbed them and put them on, then turned on the light. “Skids? What’s going on?”

“I need your help.”

Rung put the phone on speaker as he sprung out of bed and started throwing on his clothes from yesterday. “Where are you?”

“Downtown, the bus stop by Main and Spruce.”

“What happened?”

“Something…something really bad, and it’s my fault.”

Outside his window, Rung heard sirens. It could be unrelated, but he was close enough to downtown... “Skids, _what happened?_ ”

“I killed someone.” Skids voice was somewhere between a whisper and a sob. Rung froze.

“Skids…”

“I didn’t mean to…my friend’s power…but I can’t make excuses. I did it.”

“Skids, I’m going to call the TA, and they’re going to sort this out. We’ll come get you, and we’ll sort this out together, okay?”

Skids made a hitched noise that Rung hoped was supposed to be a yes.

“I’ll be there soon,” Rung said, stuffing his feet into shoes as he hung up and then dialed the Legislators’ hotline. A voice Rung didn’t recognize answered.

“This is Rung. I’m an employee in the Psychological Science department.” He gave his employee number. “I need help at the intersection of Main and Spruce.”

“We’ll send someone right away,” the voice said. Rung shut the phone just as he started his car.

He pulled up sloppily in an empty parking space across the street from the bus stop and ran across the street, ignoring an angry beep from a car that had to slow down to accommodate him. He ran all the way into the covered bus stop, where Skids sat curled up on the bench, head between his knees.

He looked up when he saw Rung, and Rung sat down and immediately pulled him into a hug. Skids sunk into it at first, shuddering, then seemed to recoil. Rung kept a hand on his shoulder as he let Skids curl back in on himself.

“Skids, what happened?” he asked as Skids shook next to him.

“I was out with my – this guy Getaway. I haven’t told you about him because – because he asked me not to. He’s an Outlier. He can…he calls it imposing his will. He can make people do what he wants. He can’t turn it off. We were just walking back to his from the bars when we saw this guy getting held up. Getaway he – he said we could stop it. We were the only ones who could get there in time who had the strength to. We got the assailant to drop the gun, but then – we disagreed.” Skids had to take a moment to take a few shuddering breaths. “Apparently it was an interpersonal thing, not a random mugging, because the guy against the wall picked up the gun while we had the other guy under our control. I tried to stop him shooting, but…Getaway wanted him to. I don’t know if he knew something I didn’t, or if he just wanted to see what would happen but…he overpowered me. The guy shot the guy who’d been holding him up and ran off. Getaway grabbed me and we ran – I couldn’t even think, I was so scared. We got back downtown and I…I was so pissed at him, and he didn’t _get_ it, and he left me there. I just…found a place to sit down and called you. The cops might be looking for me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go to prison, but maybe I deserve it.”

Rung squeezed Skids’ shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.” That much was clear.

He didn’t have time to say anything more before a familiar gray-sided van pulled up right in front of the stop, flashers turning on as Legislators exploded out of the back. 

“We heard about this guy on the police scanner,” one of them told Rung as two others manhandled Skids out of the covered stop and into handcuffs. “Thanks for the tip.”

“He didn’t do whatever they’re saying he did,” Rung said. “He needs our help.”

“That’s for the Judge to decide,” the Legislator said. It had only been seconds, but the others had already loaded Skids into the car.

“Are you going back to the facility? I’ll follow you,” Rung said.

“No, you won’t,” the Legislator said, after a pause that made it sound like someone was relaying an order. “Go home. This isn’t about you.”

“He’s my friend,” Rung said. He hadn’t even seen Skids’ face since the Legislators pulled up, too busy arguing.

“That’s why we need you to go home,” the Legislator said. “This is our job. Stick to your own.” Without giving Rung any time to reply, he hopped back into the passenger seat of the van and it sped away as he closed the door, disappearing out of sight before Rung could even get back across the street to his car.

 

* * *

 

_Two years later._

 

Rung looked around his living room. He’d put out his tea collection and some snacks, which no one had touched. Chromedome and Prowl sat as far away from each other as possible, with Rodimus awkwardly in the middle, glancing between them as if trying to decipher the source of the tension.

_They’re just kids_. They were Rung’s – Skids’ – only chance. 

“You all understand why you’re here, and I want to thank you agreeing to help me,” Rung began, flattening his palms on his pants to ensure that no one but Prowl would notice them shaking. “The plan was to go over our strategy one night and execute it another, but extenuating circumstances –” Rung couldn’t help but glance at Rodimus who twisted his hands together in his lap “– have shortened our timeline. We need to do this tonight or not at all.”

Rung typed his passcode into his computer instead of watching his patients – his crew – react to that. It didn’t matter how they reacted, not in this moment. This was either happening or it wasn’t, and any consequences could be dealt with later.

Prowl seemed to manage to swallow the objections he surely had, and Rung pulled up the slides he’d prepared. He hadn’t given the presentation a title. They all knew what their goal was.

The first slide was the floor plan of the TA, a three-story building plus the basement and sub-basement. “Rodimus,” he said, keeping his voice as gentle as possible, as if he could compensate for what he was about to ask of him. “Does this look correct to you?”

Rodimus had been staring at his hands, but he looked up at being addressed. “Yeah,” he said. “Five levels. You can get to them all from the elevator, but you need a special keycard. The second basement’s a long hallway with rows of rooms on each side. The ground floor is split in two – half is lobby and cafeteria with lots of windows, half is offices and stuff.”

That sounded like the facility Rung knew. The sub-basement had been used for storage when he’d been there, as far as he’d known, and the basement had been laboratories and larger equipment. Patient rooms had been – were _supposed_ to be – on the top two floors. Rung had no idea if things had changed, or if he simply hadn’t looked closely enough back then.

That didn’t matter right now. “There’s a box at the back entrance that controls the electricity for the back half of the building. Rodimus will use his ability to create a power surge and we’ll have a few seconds to open the door before the generator kicks in.”

“I can’t use my powers on command,” Rodimus said. “You know that.”

“I believe that you’ll be able to do it,” Rung said. And if he couldn’t do it by himself, Rung had prompts in mind that he could use to get Rodimus’s ability to manifest involuntarily. He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did, the damage could be healed later. “Once we’re inside, the first priority is to find Skids,” he said. “He could be on level 2 or 3, but my best guess is that he’d being held in the sub-basement.” Rung didn’t miss Rodimus’s shiver.

Rung took a deep breath. He’d had to decide how much information to share when he’d first been briefing Chromedome, all of it at the expense of Skids’ privacy. Rodimus and Prowl didn’t know anything about Skids other than the fact that he existed, but if this was going to work, they all had to understand what they were getting into. Rung switched the slide. “Skids has been in a coma for the past several months. His outlier ability is his propensity to mimic the abilities of other outliers around him. The TA had him working with a telepath, and that telepath had a heart attack and died while they were sharing thoughts. The rebound trapped Skids in his mind, I suspect unable to escape from the other individual’s memories. Chromedome and I have talked about how to bring him out of it.” Rung looked up to see Chromedome nodding along – none of this was new to him.

“Has anything like this been done before?” Prowl asked. Rung had spoken with him earlier over the plans for the building, and Prowl had discovered and corrected several weak spots in his strategy, but he’d selfishly avoided this topic – he’d hoped that Chromedome being around when they addressed it might alleviate things. From the clear tension between the two of them, Rung suspected that he may have miscalculated.

“No,” Rung said, “but we’ve talked through what Chromedome will need to do –”

“What are the chances that he gets trapped too?”

“He won’t,” Rung said, summoning all of the confidence he felt and faking a little more. “Because we’ll be here to support him from this side.”

Prowl gave Rung a searching look and stayed silent, apparently accepting Rung’s confidence in the plan.

“Based on the depth of the rooms, I’m hoping that Chromedome will be able to sense Skids with his abilities,” Rung said. “The doors open with keycards, and I know where to get a master keycard that we’ll be able to use for both the elevator and the rooms. The director of the TA, Tyrest, keeps his card in a designated spot in his desk. We’re going to need to break into his office – and the desk – the old-fashioned way.”

“Which of us knows how to pick locks?” Chromedome asked, obviously skeptical.

“I do,” Rung said. “Before he was their prisoner, Skids was a security consultant for the TA. I was his main contact in the organization. He designed the card access system and showed me a few tricks people might use to exploit it.”

Chromedome lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say anything else.

“So we hit Tyrest’s office, then find Skids,” Rodimus said. “That’s it? We’re going to just let them keep doing everything they’re doing, after all that?”

“We’re going to save Skids,” Rung repeated. “And then we’re going to decide what to do next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind control CW is in effect; also CW for descriptions of gun violence & murder


	11. Skids II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter in the end notes

Rodimus stepped up to the telephone pole and stared up at the fuse box lightheaded with terror. Once, he would have been setting something on fire any time he felt like this, with only the desperate hope that he’d hit something that could safely burn.

Back then, he’d almost never felt this afraid. It wasn’t rational, it wasn’t even useful. But he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that once he went inside that building, he’d never make it back out. That the months he’d been back in the outside world had been a fluke. That he’d spend the rest of his life in there, never seeing sunlight, wondering what else it would be possible for them to do to him before they killed him.

He didn’t even particularly want this to work, he realized, as he stood there, shivering from some combination of the cold and the fear. He wanted to be back home, curled up on the couch and watching TV. He wanted to never have to go into that building again. He wanted to be sheltered from the cold. He wanted Drift.

He wanted a lot of things he couldn’t have.

He tried to focus on the longing, on the terror, on the discomfort of standing out here in December weather. None of it worked. They’d well and truly beaten his ability to set fires out of him.

But he’d done it when Getaway had been trying to hurt Rung. They hadn’t taken away his ability to set fires when he wanted to protect someone – he hadn’t had anyone in there to protect.

They weren’t here for kicks. They were here to save Rung’s friend. Rung had shown them a picture of him back at his apartment, so that they would all recognize him at the facility. Rodimus thought about the man’s easygoing grin. He thought about all the things he knew could be happening to him in this building, and he thought about the soft look in Rung’s eyes as they’d lingered on that picture. Rodimus thought about what he could do to get Skids to safety. To _help_.

And he felt it. It was a tickle at the tips of his fingers at first, warmth that spread up his arms until he knew that it was _ready_. He’d never been quite this aware of it before. He looked up at the fuse box, pointed his palms toward it, and sent flames streaking twenty feet above him.

They hadn’t taken his power away. Not in the only sense that mattered.

The fuse box began to spark under the assault and then something inside of it exploded. Rodimus let the flames end and stumbled back, dizzy like he always was after doing that.

A hand on his shoulder steadied him, and Rodimus turned around to see Rung. Chromedome had the door open and was ushering Prowl through as Prowl gave him a scathing look, and Rung led Rodimus inside in awkward, tripping steps.

Once they were inside the facility Rodimus found a wall to lean against, trying to blink through the waviness that had overtaken his vision.

“Rodimus? Are you alright?” Rung’s voice was quiet but urgent.

“I’ll be fine,” Rodimus said. Already, the image of the hallway was starting to clear up, though Rodimus still felt like he’d fall flat on his face if he tried to run more than five steps. Setting fires had always left Rodimus tired, and he couldn’t think of the last time he’d done so twice in a day.

Well, he could. But that hadn’t been at a time when he’d had any reason to care about what happened after.

He followed Rung, Chromedome, and Prowl down the familiar hallway – he hadn’t been up here much, but they’d walked him through here to meet with the Director, those three times.

It wasn’t until Rung was kneeling in front of a familiar glass door that Rodimus realized that the Director was the same person as Rung’s old boss. He couldn’t help but keep the edge of a grin off his face. That bastard was going to hate it when he found out they’d used his personal key card for their mission.

Rung got the door open quickly and everyone but Prowl followed him inside the office area to the second door, past where Tyrest’s secretary sat during the day. Prowl lingered at the door, glancing up and down the hallway.

Rodimus lingered in the secretary’s space while Rung ducked into the office and returned in a few minutes, gesturing for Rodimus and Chromedome to follow him back out the door. Rodimus did, and it wasn’t until they were back in the hallway that he really registered where they were going next.

Back to the basement, like he’d expected to end up again, somehow, the last time he’d left this place. He’d chosen to be here, he knew. It was different.

Still, the fear was nauseating as he followed Chromedome down the hall and toward the elevator that loomed at the end of it.

At least he didn’t start fires when he felt like this anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

The elevator opened to the basement and Prowl stepped out first, prepared for what he knew he had to do. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but they didn’t have time for Chromedome to walk past every door in this hallway.

Rung thought that Prowl’s problem was that he paid attention to everything. Prowl hadn’t bothered to correct him – typically, Prowl didn’t pay attention to anything and he perceived it anyway. But now, he focused. He shut his eyes and he paid attention.

He felt his head start to pound immediately with the strain. Even with his eyes closed, the sound and feeling of the air currents made it possible for him to visualize the hallway in front of him and its twenty doors. Once he’d filtered out background sounds, he focused in on the rooms behind the doors, muffled as if with soundproofing. Sounds of breathing, of footsteps, anything that would indicate something about the person behind the door.

The person in the closest room was too small to be Skids. The next person was awake and moving around, so couldn’t be Skids. The third and fourth rooms were empty. The next one contained a person and more medical equipment than Prowl had perceived in the average room. He couldn’t tell much about the person except that they were breathing slowly and evenly.

He pointed without opening his eyes. “Fifth door on the left.”

“Thank you,” Rung said. He started down the hall, passing Prowl.

Chromedome was still behind Prowl, and Prowl felt him reaching for him. He waited until Chromedome’s hand touched his elbow, steadying, before he opened his eyes and jerked away.

“Are you okay?” Chromedome asked, eyes wide and pupils enlarged in the dim light of the hallway.

“ _Now_ you’re speaking to me?” Prowl’s head was still pounding, all the input still coming in from his senses too loud and too intense, as if he could drown in it.

Chromedome groaned and put a hand to his face, a nervous gesture of his that Prowl had pegged from the first day they’d met. “There’s a lot we need to figure out. Right now, I just want to know if you’re okay.”

Prowl wasn’t. He was hurting and overwhelmed. But he was too angry at Chromedome to let him see it. “I’m fine. Worry about yourself.” With effort, he started to follow Rung down the hall.

 

* * *

 

 

Chromedome thought about asking Rodimus and Prowl to step outside. Both of them were so stressed that their panic was eating at Chromedome’s own mind, telling him to be alert, to run. Prowl’s incomprehensible thoughts were usually a soothing distraction, but now everything he was thinking was tinged with distress. Rung was barely better, though he at least was keeping a lid on it.

Chromedome knew that if he focused on Skids and did what Rung had told him to do, all of it would go away. He’d wanted a moment to prepare himself before doing it, but with Rodimus and Prowl screaming in his head, it was clear that he wasn’t going to get one.

There was a chair next to Skids’ bedside and he went ahead and sat in it. Rung perched on an unoccupied spot on the narrow bed on Skids’ other side, and Rodimus and Prowl hung back.

Skids looked alive. He was breathing by his own power, with a little device on his finger monitoring his heartbeat and oxygen levels. His eyes were closed, long lashes brushing his cheeks. He could have been sleeping.

Chromedome focused on him. He kept his eyes open at first, taking in the details of Skids’ appearance as he reached toward him with his mind. Skids’ thoughts were an intimidating blank slate, a hole where they should be. Even unconscious people had dreams and weird flickers of things running through their minds, but from Skids there was just…an absence.

Rung had told him to expect this. He focused harder.

It was like a bubble had popped when he broke in. He felt like he was falling, even though he could feel himself grabbing the edges of the sheets on Skids’ bed and knew that he’d gone nowhere. Skids mind was suddenly a burst of things, feelings and memories and images and words.

There was a hand on Chromedome’s arm. He heard a voice – Rung’s voice – calling to him as if through water. “Chromedome? What’s happening?”

“Let me concentrate.” He wasn’t even sure if he managed to say it out loud. He focused in on a random detail of Skids’ memories – he recognized the location as a rock climbing gym. Skids remembered the challenge of keeping his fingers cramped in an awkward position as he reached for the next protrusion, the familiar smell of sweat and chalk, the security of the rope attached to his harness.

That was all he was getting from that one. Chromedome broke away, hoping to find something that Skids was thinking about a _bit_ more consciously. Something that his poking at would show Skids that Chromedome was there.

He came up on an image of a rainy night and focused in on it. Here Skids was, laughing with another man who had his arm casually looped over Skids’ shoulders. The rain and the cold seemed distant through the haze of alcohol. Skids was dreading something – no, he was dreading it, and unaware that he should be dreading it, simultaneously.

Chromedome focused in on the contradiction. This was the kind of sign that Rung had told him to look for – a sign that Skids was here, both in memory and in the present.

 _Skids?_ He thought tentatively in Skids’ direction. He’d never been able to project his thoughts to someone else, but with what Rung had told him about Skids, he should be able to use Chromedome’s power back on him.

 _Who are you?_ The memory continued, but the contradiction that was Skids resolved itself into two separate beings – Skids on the rainy street, who had no idea that something terrible was about to happen, and Skids now, tense against Chromedome’s intrusion.

_My name is Chromedome. You’ve been trapped here by a telepath like me. I’m here to get you out._

_What do I have to do_? Skids asked. In the background, the memory continued. Skids’ companion tensed and oriented towards something in an alley they were passing, dragging Skids’ attention towards it. Skids noticed the gleam of a gun.

Chromedome couldn’t help but feel a flicker of dread himself, even when he reminded himself that whatever he was seeing had happened long ago. _Go into my mind,_ Chromedome instructed. _Just follow my thoughts, make the connection. See where you are. You should be able to wake up after that._

Chromedome saw Skids’ companion start to run toward the man with the gun and felt Skids make the decision to follow him. Then he pulled back, focusing on the room around him and hoping that Skids would manage to follow.

Awareness of the room came back what felt like too fast – Rung hovering over Skids, expression pinched, and the muted roar of anxiety from Rodimus and Prowl on the other side of the room. Then Chromedome felt Skids tentatively following him, seeing the room through Chromedome’s eyes. He felt Skids’ horror at seeing himself laying still on a hospital bed, surrounded by medical equipment, followed by a surge of affection that he couldn’t place. Then he saw Skids eyelids twitch and his eyes slowly blink open.

He was already pulling back from the connection when he heard Skids’ distant _thank you_.

 

* * *

 

Rung tried to keep his breathing even as he watched Chromedome’s eyelids flicker in his struggle through Skids’ mind. He of all people had to remain calm here. Even if this was the moment the past two years of his life had been building to. No matter the stakes for him, he was responsible for the people around him right now in myriad ways and he _would_ stay calm.

When Skids blinked awake, his eyes immediately meeting Rung’s, Rung’s own eyes filled with tears. He tried to blink them away and made an effort to speak around the lump that had lodged itself in his throat.

“Skids?” His voice came out a whisper.

Rung was happy he’d blinked the tears back for long enough to see Skids’ wavering smile in response, but he couldn’t keep his eyes dry after that. He put his hands to his eyes, trying to calm down, and suddenly there was a hand on his back. He blinked to see that Skids, despite having just woken up, had managed to get his arm around Rung and was weakly pulling him closer.

Rung let Skids gather him into a hug. He stroked Skids’ back and tried to calm down, tried to convince himself that this was real, that they’d made it this far. Skids seemed to need the time too. He flexed and relaxed his hands against Rung’s back, shifted his position experimentally, obviously weaker than he was used to being.

After a while, Rung felt calm enough to pull away and reassert control over the mission. They were not clear yet, and Rung couldn’t relax until Skids was out of the TA, safely and for good. He kept a hand on Skids’ shoulder as Skids struggled his way into a sitting position.

“What happens now?” Skids asked, his voice gravelly after so long in disuse. “Are we leaving?”

“We’re leaving,” Rung assured him. “Do you think you can stand?”

“If it gets me out of here, I can do whatever you want,” Skids said, but he needed Rung’s help to swing his legs over the side of the bed and lever himself to his feet.

 

* * *

 

 

Every step was like walking through mud. Putting one foot in front of the other was a new and unique challenge. Skids knew that he was leaning hard on Rung and Chromedome, barely stumbling forward, but they were making it. He just had to keep walking.

Focus on walking, and not on the dizzying array of abilities around him infiltrating his mind. Someone’s enhanced senses were mixing badly with Skids’ just-awoken grogginess, and Chromedome’s telepathy wasn’t helping. But if his time as a prisoner of the TA had had one upside, it was that he’d gotten used to this sort of thing.

Skids took another step forward as one of the strangers – Rodimus, he realized he knew from Chromedome’s memories – darted forward to push the button on the elevator. As soon as he did, he could tell that the elevator was already making its way towards them – nothing in the sound from that wall changed when Rodimus pushed the button.

Then he felt it. He couldn’t believe there had ever been a time when he’d been able to be around Getaway without the curdling revulsion he felt now in his gut along with the sense in his mind of Getaway’s power and Skids’ pushing against each other.

“No,” Skids said, just as the elevator doors slid open. Rung’s hand barely had time to tense on his shoulder before the source of Skids’ trepidation became obvious.

“Well look at this, it’s the whole gang,” Getaway said, arms crossed and eyes boring into Skids’. How had he gotten here? How had he known?

“Rung? What’s going on?” asked Chromedome, obviously on edge. He should be. Skids could sense Getaway’s thoughts too, in the cacophony of all the abilities he was sharing with the people around him.

“Nothing to worry about,” Rung replied.

Skids was confused for a moment – of course Getaway was a threat, unless things had changed massively since the last time he and Rung had spoken. Then his stupid, sluggish, overwhelmed brain remembered Getaway’s power.

It was too late. Rung pulled Skids out of Chromedome’s grip and towards Getaway, then left Skids pinwheeling his arms for balance as he quickly stepped backward. Then Skids was walking forward on shaky legs, towards Getaway who was now leaning against the door to the elevator.

“Stay back,” Skids heard himself say. It was hearing his own voice as if from far away, saying something that he was sure he didn’t want to be saying, that pushed him to fight back against the overwhelming influence of Getaway in his mind.

He was too weak and stretched too thin with all of the abilities clambering for space in his mind. But he pushed against Getaway anyway, trying to channel his version of Getaway’s ability enough to resist.

He couldn’t do it. All he accomplished was causing the world to spin dizzyingly around him, then his vision to black out, and then the next thing he noticed was a burst of pain as he fell to the floor.

“Skids!” he heard Rung yell from behind him, as if through water.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Getaway said, not sounding as if he’d moved from his spot holding the elevator door open. “Fireboy, you’re up.”

The next thing Skids was aware of was a blast of heat, followed by the realization that Getaway’s influence wasn’t on him anymore.

He tried to call for Rung, but it came out in barely a whisper. He was too weak to shout, too weak to stand, and he could feel Getaway advancing on his back with him powerless to do anything about it.

 

* * *

 

An alarm is going to sound, and Drift is going to hurt someone.

Drift is going to wake up in the middle of the night – or so he suspects. He doesn’t actually know what’s night and what’s day anymore. He’s going to be confused for a moment, and then he’s going to hear the alarm. A safety lock on Drift’s door will detach.

He’s going to leave his room, and he’ll grab a fire extinguisher from its usual spot in the hallway. He’ll run up to a man in a leather jacket who’s walking up to person cowering on the floor in a hospital gown and hit the back of his head with all his strength.

Drift doesn’t know what’s going to happen if he doesn’t hit the man in the leather jacket with the fire extinguisher.

Drift woke up. There was a second between waking up and hearing the alarm when he fervently wished that this wasn’t it. That he would have more time to decide whether he wanted to risk following the direction of the vision, or risk the alternative.

Then he heard the alarm and he remembered that he’d made his decision eight years ago.

The sound of the alarm was faint from the room – Drift doubted he would have heard it if he wasn’t already awake. No matter what else happened, he couldn’t stay here. People were in danger.

Drift stood up and opened the door, making his way out into the hallway. Every fourth light or so was on, showing the hallway quiet and clear.

Drift wasn’t sure if anyone was behind any of the other doors, or if they were safe. He’d have time to check on them later, he decided. He had destiny to fulfill, first, and then he could work on doing that a good person would do. The fire extinguisher seemed to leap out at him from its place on the wall, illuminated by the number of times he’d already been over this moment in his mind. He opened the cabinet and yanked it out, staggering with the surprising weight of it. This…this thing could _really_ hurt a person.

He paused there in the hallway, clutching the cold exterior of the extinguisher. He could go back to his room. He could put the extinguisher away and try to talk down the assailant.

Or he could trust himself. He could trust that his visions were showing him the way. That they existed in harmony with his choices and his desires, rather than to challenge him.

He didn’t know where the visions came from. Trusting them felt like taking a dive backwards off a cliff. It felt like trusting himself.

Taking a firmer grip on the fire extinguisher, he started down the hallway.

He broke into a run when he laid eyes on the man in the leather jacket advancing on the figure in the hospital gown. Just like in the vision, his demeanor was predatory. Just like in the vision, Drift ignored everything else around him – the wail of the alarm, the smell of smoke – and charged.

The fire extinguisher connected with the side of the man’s head, dropping him to the floor without giving him a chance to notice Drift coming. The vision had been fulfilled. And now Drift had to deal with the consequences.

First, the smell of smoke. The alarm. Drift turned toward the hallway across from the elevator and saw a wall of fire in the middle of the hallway, smoke billowing up from it but the flames staying put. Had there been some kind of gasoline spill?

Drift tried to point and spray the fire extinguisher, but the handle was stuck on something, and it was too unwieldy for Drift to examine. He struggled with it until something turned his attention back to the fire.

There was a figure walking through it. Drift tried even more frantically to spray the fire extinguisher, terrified for the person’s life. But the figure emerged unharmed, even his hair unsinged.

“Rodimus?” Drift could scarcely believe it, and his mind seemed to stop working when he tried to consider why he might be here.

Rodimus just smiled, the expression stopping before it reached his eyes, and took the fire extinguisher from Drift’s limp hands. He pulled something out of the handle and then white foam was spraying out of it, towards the flames on the floor. In less than a minute the fire was out, the air still thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals.

Drift flung himself into Rodimus’s arms, barely noticing the sound of the fire extinguisher hitting the floor as Rodimus hugged him back just as hard.

“Drift?”

Drift kissed the top of Rodimus’s head and pulled back, looking up to see Rung and two strangers emerge from the smoke. Rung assessed him up and down – probably checking if he was hurt, and then went to check on the person in the hospital gown on the floor, who had made his way to a seated position.

“Skids?” Rung asked. Skids looked up at Rung, and then reached for him, using Rung’s strength to pull himself to his feet.

“We need to get out of here,” someone said from behind Drift.

“We do,” Rung said. The stranger who hadn’t spoken walked over to Rung and Skids and slung one of Skids’ arms around his shoulders.

Skids twisted his face into something that looked like anger, and then said, “We can’t leave him.”

“Uh, we sure can,” Rodimus said. “He tried to hurt Rung today.”

“He’s tried to hurt a lot of people,” Skids said. “Sometimes he’s succeeded. We can’t leave him here.”

“He could hurt you,” Rung said, eyes on Skids’.

“I know,” Skids said. “We can’t leave him here.”

Rung maintained his staring contest with Skids, but the other stranger, who’d had his arms crossed with his gaze darting between members of the group as they’d argued, finally moved. He started to pull the unconscious figure up and then looked at Rodimus. “Any interest in helping?”

Rodimus rolled his eyes but went to help pull the man in the leather jacket to his feet, leaving Drift to push the button on the elevator that would get them out of here. He held open the door for the rest of the group to get on.

Rodimus managed to catch his hand as he supported the man in the leather jacket. “Please come with us,” was all he said, voice barely betraying the desperation in his eyes.

“I’m coming with you,” Drift said. He stepped onto the elevator, and followed Rodimus to the main floor and then out of the facility for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter: same old flavor of mind control, descriptions of panic/anxiety, violence, medical imagery. feel free to ask for details.
> 
> final chapter will be up in a few days!


	12. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we've reached the end! thanks for sticking with it

Nautica hadn’t slept in she didn’t even know how many hours, between the time change and the drive and the pacing nervously around the airport and the flight. She didn’t try to doze in the Uber, even though she suspected that what with it being morning here, she wouldn’t have a chance to sleep for another many hours yet.

Instead, she looked again at the emails.

_Hey Nautica_ , the first one that Skids had sent after she’d last seen him started. She’d received it almost two years ago, the day before her dissertation defense. _So sorry I can’t make it to your thing. I have a last-minute work trip that I couldn’t get out of, I might be out of the state until after you leave :( :(. I’m cheering you on from afar, and I know you’ll do great!_

_Happy trails,_

_Skids_

She hadn’t even entertained the notion that it might not be him emailing her, back when she’d received it. Whoever had sent that must have read through their entire history of emails, and been a hardcore social engineer besides. Who else could it have been but Skids? Who else signed off their emails with _happy trails_?

The emails between them had gotten shorter and less frequent recently, which Nautica had assumed was the natural consequence of her living on the other side of the country and both of them moving on with their lives. When she’d reread the emails for the third or fourth time on the plane, she’d noticed that the gaps in how long it took Skids to respond to her had increased mathematically, not randomly. A week between Nautica’s email and the reply, then two, then three. Nautica had stopped replying immediately, not wanting to seem too eager to continue the friendship if Skids was trying to phase it out. 

Her eyes burned in the back of the Uber as she remembered that line of thinking yet again. How could she have been so _stupid_?

The Uber pulled up in front of the address Rung had given her. Nautica blinked away tears and handed the driver a cash tip, then grabbed her overstuffed backpack and got out of the car.

Would he even want to see her? After she’d abandoned him, after she’d let _whatever_ had happened happen? She would almost rather turn around and go home than find out. Almost.

She buzzed at the correct apartment number and a few seconds later, a click from the door indicated that it had unlocked. She pushed open the door and went up the stairs to the third floor, and allowed herself one deep breath before knocking on the door.

She expected to see Rung when it opened, and her jaw dropped when the figure on the other side turned out to be Skids. He was thinner than he’d been, and the circles under his eyes made him look like he’d aged more than two years in the time she’d been away, but his smile was exactly the same.

She felt her eyes start to water for the second time in five minutes as he pulled her through the doorway and into a crushing hug.

 

* * *

 

 

Rung was in the middle of answering an inquiry email when his phone rang. Pipes. He finished the sentence he was on and then answered. “Yes?”

“Rung? Sorry to bother you when you’re getting ready for your day, but there’s someone here who’s insisting on seeing you.”

“Who is it?” Rung asked, making a mental note to set up…code phrases, or a shared alarm system, or something that Pipes could use to warn him if Getaway somehow made his way into the office again. No one had heard from him since he’d slipped away from the group after regaining consciousness the night they’d gotten Skids back. Skids was convinced he’d left town.

“Says his name is Chromedome?”

Rung felt the tension in his shoulders ease. “Send him in.”

Chromedome walked in carrying an overstuffed backpack. “Sorry to barge in like this,” he said. “I just got back from winter break, so I was in the neighborhood.”

“It’s no problem – I’m glad I was free,” Rung said. “Have a seat.”

Chromedome did, gingerly sitting on the couch with his backpack at his feet. Evidently he’d come straight from the Greyhound station.

“I did.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I came here right from the bus station.”

Oh. Rung felt his cheeks color – there was a reason he’d conducted all of his previous meetings with Chromedome over Skype. “I’d prefer if you didn’t do that.”

Chromedome shrugged. “I can’t turn it off. But I didn’t come here to breach your privacy on purpose. I just wanted to know – how is he?”

Rung had forbidden any of them from contacting him after they’d split up that night, knowing that the TA would know that he was responsible and wanting to keep the rest of them out of the line of fire as much as possible.

Unfortunately, that meant that Chromedome was probably intuiting the truthful answer to Rung’s question even as he tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t alarm Chromedome. Skids was safe. Skids was staying at an apartment Rung had rented, and had been laying low. They were figuring out what steps to take to keep Getaway safely away from them. Skids was…recovering. He was having trouble sleeping, and he and Nautica both had started to ask Rung the hard questions Rung had known they’d have about how much Rung had known about what the TA really did. It was still hard, and Rung suspected that it would be that way for a long time.

“Skids is better off for your help,” was what Rung said out loud. “How are you, Chromedome?”

One of the things that Rung knew he’d always regret about this whole process was forsaking the opportunity to give Chromedome the help he needed, in favor of using him for Skids’ admittedly more urgent situation.

“I’m alright,” Chromedome said. “Prowl isn’t speaking to me. We talked the day after, and I thought he’d forgive me for, you know, trying to do the right thing, but he – I don’t know, didn’t? Couldn’t? I think he’s going to contact you about pressing charges over what Froid and all them did – which I think is a good idea, and I really think he’d be good at – but he’s insisting on shutting me out of it. And out of his life.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” It had seemed inevitable to Rung, as he got to know Prowl and Chromedome better, that the relationship would one day implode. Prowl was too set in his ways to not have frequent, massive disagreements with the more impulsive Chromedome. They were so young, though, and Rung wished that he could have let them have the all the time it could have taken them to learn everything they could from the relationship. For Prowl to learn to trust another person, especially. Instead, he’d inadvertently pushed on the issues, and –

And Skids was safe. He had needed to remind himself of that quite frequently.

“I know he’s having a hard time reconciling the breaking and entering, and with the fact that that place was government-sanctioned in the first place, but I can’t help if he won’t talk to me,” Chromedome said with a shrug. It occurred to Rung that Chromedome was being more flippant about this than Rung would have expected of him. Rung couldn’t honestly say he knew Chromedome very well, but he had seemed like the type of person to take the end of a relationship, inevitable as it may have been, harshly and personally.

“How are you feeling about it?” Rung asked.

“Angry at him, if anything, but not much, to be honest. I actually – I’ve been talking to someone else, and we’ve clicked really well, so I haven’t been thinking about it as much as I suspect he has.”

“In that case, I hope things continue to go well. I can’t thank you enough for your help, last month.”

“It was worth it,” Chromedome said. “And – it was the best thing I’ve ever done for someone. The idea that there’s a way for me to use this power for good – that alone makes it all worth it.”

“I’m glad,” Rung said. “And I hope that any way you find to use your ability for good in the future is a tad more law-abiding.”

Chromedome cracked a rueful smile. “Well, if you need me, you know how to find me,” he said. “All the best, Rung.”

“All the best,” Rung replied. Chromedome left, shutting the door behind him, and Rung tried to focus on preparing for his day.

 

* * *

 

 

Rung picked up his audio recorder out of habit as he looked at Drift’s file and then put it back down. He was done even pretending to cooperate with the TA by sending them updates, truth or lie, about his patients. He’d always conceptualized the updates as a secondary concern after providing his patients with appropriate care, but freeing himself his last tie to the TA was more of a weight off his shoulders than he’d expected.

Instead of making the usual recording, he scanned the file and got his thoughts in order. He really had no idea how to prepare for this session – they would probably talk about the night at the TA, and possibly the rest of Drift’s time there. Rung had some questions of his own about the role Drift had played that night and he did his best to compartmentalize those thoughts in order to properly run a session.

Satisfied with his preparation, he tucked the file away and went to the door. Drift appeared to be typing something on his phone in the lobby, and Rung rapped softly on his office door to get his attention.

Drift looked up and shut the phone off, standing up to make his way into the office. They took their usual seats, and Rung started off as he would for a typical session, which this very much was not. “How are you doing today?”

“Good, actually,” Drift said. “I think this is the first time that you’ve asked when I could really, honestly say that.”

“I’m very glad to hear that you’re doing well,” Rung said. “Is there anything on your mind that you’d like to talk about?”

“I’m guessing you already know,” Drift said, his smile humorless. “They haven’t tried to contact me. Rodimus is terrified that they’re going to…grab me in the middle of the night, or something. He was worried that something would happen coming here.”

_He has reason to be afraid_ , Rung didn’t say, because no matter what Drift already knew, that would be a massive violation of Rodimus’s privacy. “Well, you can be assured that if anything does happen, you can call me.” Rung didn’t know how much he’d be able to do if the TA _really_ decided to strike back, considering that it had taken him two years of attempts, tooth-gritted cooperation to ensure they didn’t see him as a threat, and finally teetering on the knife’s edge of malpractice to get Skids out of there – but he’d done it, and if necessary, he would do the like again.  

Drift smiled, the expression looking a little more real this time. “I know,” he said.

“Can I ask how you found the organization, while you were there?” Drift’s stay at the TA had been less than a week, but with the way it had left its marks on Rodimus, Skids – and Rung himself, in different ways, it seemed important to check in.

“First I ought to be honest about something,” Drift said. “I didn’t make that decision for the reason I said. I knew what was going to happen that night.”

Rung nodded, unsurprised.

“I guess it was a little of both, really,” Drift said. “I really did want the visions gone. I wanted to be free of them, but as soon as it started to seem like a real possibility, and while I was thinking about what was going to happen that night at the same time, I realized something. It’s probably strange, to have this be such a change, after all this time, but I realized that the visions – they don’t exist to hurt me. They’re there to guide me. They show me what I can do to get to the best outcome from a situation, even if that outcome still sucks. It’s a power, really a power, not a burden.”

“All of the research the TA has done on precognitives suggests that there’s no particular valence to the visions you experience,” Rung said. It seemed like the sort of thing Drift ought to hear at this juncture. “What you see – there’s no evidence that it’s the best outcome, or the worst, or anything in particular. What you see is simply the unfolding of one of many paths.”

“Is there evidence _against_ what I said?” Drift asked, seeming genuinely curious.

Rung thought about that. “I suppose not.” It just seemed ludicrous, to him as a scientist, that Drift’s power could work that way.

“Well, if science doesn’t have an opinion, why can’t there be room for faith?” Drift said. “I have faith – based on you _know_ how much experience – that the visions are there to guide me. To prepare me for what’s to come, to help me make things as good as I can make them. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to learn, but I’m grateful for it now. It changes _everything_.”

“You deserve to be happy,” Rung said. “I’m glad for you. I also never took the opportunity to thank you for your help that night.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Drift said. “That’s…really, that’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“Then I hope you find more opportunities to help others in the future,” Rung said.

“Me too.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rung’s cell phone rang, the caller ID presenting an unfamiliar local number. “Hello?” he answered.

“Hello, doc,” said a familiar voice that sent chills down his spine.

“Getaway.” Rung hoped that he kept his shock out of his voice.

Apparently, he didn’t succeed. “No need to be afraid, doc,” Getaway said. “My powers don’t work from afar. I’ve checked.”

“Why are you calling me, Getaway?” Rung asked, his fingers hovering over the emergency alert button under his desk, even though he knew it wouldn’t help.

“All I want is for you to give this number to Skids,” Getaway said. “You trust him, right? I just want you to tell him how he can contact me if he wants to. I’m not asking for his number – you know that I could find you, I could catch you distracted again, and I could get it. But I’m just asking for this one very reasonable thing.”

Rung hated it. He didn’t want Skids anywhere near Getaway ever again. But as Getaway said, Rung’s only part in this was to give Skids the power to make his own decision. And after so long in captivity, Rung’s instinct was to give Skids as much freedom as he could.

Even if Rung feared it was at the expense of his safety. “The number you’re calling from?”

Getaway’s reply was a second too late, as if he hadn’t expected Rung to capitulate that quickly. “Yeah.”

“I’ll give it to him. Don’t expect any calls.” Rung hung up.

 

* * *

 

 

Rung had written Getaway’s phone number on a slip of paper, with every intention of explaining what had happened and giving it to Skids to keep or toss or burn as he pleased. Along with it, he carried a duffel bag with what he expected to be a better-received gift: the collection of model ships that he and Skids had spent many a lunch hour building in Rung’s old office at the TA. They’d been associated with Skids, in Rung’s mind, for so long, that Rung felt they were rightfully his.

He was walking up to the door to buzz into Skids’ building when his phone rang. He ducked into the doorway and answered the call from yet another unfamiliar number.

And he heard yet another familiar voice. “Good afternoon, Rung.”

“Magnus. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t hang up right now.”

“Tyrest resigned.”

“What?”

“He didn’t do it out of remorse, or altruism. He did it because he’s terrified of you two going public and lashing out against his organization. He wants to be away from the fallout. Froid, too – he flat disappeared. That leaves the TA without a leader, and I think you’d be well suited for the position.” Magnus had always been too honest for the TA, and he didn’t seem to have developed past that in the last two years.

“So this is a bribe.”

“This is me doing my best, Rung. I always wanted for this organization to do people good. It’s become increasingly clear to me that we’ve lost our way. You never did. You’re a good person, Rung, and that’s the most important thing we need right now.”

“How long do I have to think about it?” Magnus’s words had changed Rung’s answer away from an outright _no_ , but there were so many factors to consider. His practice. His admittedly dwindling number of patients. Whatever plan Tyrest and Froid might have to blow this back against him.

“As long as you need.”

“I’ll call with my decision.” As soon as he hung up, Rung knew that he would do it. The opportunity to help the people that Tyrest had hurt, to create a real pipeline of talent into the fields of Outlier biomedical research and Outlier mental health – he couldn’t pass it up, despite the remaining ache of the fact that he would need to work under the name that had caused so much harm in order to do it.

Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe their government funding sources would let him rename it as he reforged it. The Tyrest Accord was a silly thing to call an organization, after all, when there was no Tyrest involved. He would need to talk to everyone who’d been involved in the heist before he accepted, to get their perspectives and ensure that none of them would interpret it as the kind of betrayal that Rung would have seen it as before considering it.

He raised his hand to buzz into Skids’ apartment. He’d start here, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
